Something to chew on while I'm gone

[Peaches]

You need to keep your mind on macro prevention, we already have lots of macroers, esp out in the boat. As far as boat gains? It is within the code that moving is the key to gains, staying in one spot, isn't exactly playing the game normally versus using a boat. And yes, I do use boat for my gains. If you eliminate 8 by 8, you will create more unnattended macroing, which will make the ques jump to high volume calls. It took me three days to work neromancy on two characters. I remember back in the days of old, it took me a year to gm smithing. Mind you, I had available resources compared to the newer player who starts off with very limited resources, and with the gold reduction with monsters, I can see it taking them longer to train up resourced skills, ie blacksmith etc. I dont know why there is a limit of stats per day. It should flow smoothly with the raising of ones skills. You need to look at the new player who is literally stuck with low stats, who would get very discouraged with their inability to survive even an ettan given the new changes.

As far as how long it should take to gm? I can't answer that, the method of days long ago was too long, now its too short, but that is too short for experienced players, too long for new players. The focus has to be on both, but the new player needs to have incentive to stay in the game, simply because their need for survival is detrimental, versus the vet who has plenty of resources. Just my two cents, thanks for posting this!

[Ravenspyre]

<blockquote><hr>

How much should I care about macroing prevention? Should I eliminate 8x8? If skill gain were more predictable and sane, would you even need it?

<hr></blockquote>Honestly, there is too much damage done to the system as is to even warrant removing 8x8. There are few who do not use this skill gain method. As for macroing prevention, it would have to be pretty hard system to prevent macroing alltogether. Skill gain right now, has been too easy, and generally, there isn't anyone in game who doesn't have a multi-GM character. Making it any easier, and you might as well add the Test Center set skill and stats however you like as a feature to production shards.
<blockquote><hr>

- How long should it reasonably take to GM a skill? Should all skills be the same?

<hr></blockquote>Depends on the skill. Begging, I would think would take a short ammount of time, but warrior skills and magery, should take a long time. Generally though, we are talking about a game ppl want to enjoy, and the majority do not enjoy building their character when they would rather try to test their limits.
<blockquote><hr>

- For difficulty-based skills, what information do you need? If a task isn't hard enough for you, should it tell you that?

<hr></blockquote>For me,t eh discovery of what is good, and what is not, is something that I prefer, and not being told that something is too easy for me to do. However, some would probably prefer a system like this, even though skills, like the crafts, provide an easy way to determine what is too easy, and what is not. Overall, I think it will depend on the player, and if sucha thing is implemented, a way to turn it off maybe for those who don't like such a thing. Or, like if it were taming, having a text of information say something like, you tame this creature easily, or you just barely tame it, when you succeed, not just a bark at the corner saying, it's too easy for you.
<blockquote><hr>

- I'm thinking about decoupling stat gain completely from skill gain -- so every 15 minutes, you would just gain a stat point, up to your daily limit. Is that a bad idea?

<hr></blockquote>I don't understand how you mean this generally. Do you mean, just sit around the house for 15 minutes, and you automatically gain a stat point, or do you mean actively doing any skill?

[Basil]

<blockquote><hr>

Should I eliminate 8x8

<hr></blockquote>

give me a months notice on that one /php-bin/shared/images/icons/laugh.gif

<blockquote><hr>

How long should it reasonably take to GM a skill? Should all skills be the same?



<hr></blockquote>

I think it should take longer than it does now...however after almost 6 years of bieng able to gm a warrior in 3 days (post pub 16) I think the player base has grown used to quick skill gain. If its made any slower now it will just cause a huge back lash.

<blockquote><hr>

For difficulty-based skills, what information do you need? If a task isn't hard enough for you, should it tell you that

<hr></blockquote>

can you make it tie my shoe too?

<blockquote><hr>

I'm thinking about decoupling stat gain completely from skill gain -- so every 15 minutes, you would just gain a stat point, up to your daily limit. Is that a bad idea?


<hr></blockquote>

yes, just because people are lazy dosnt mean that the game needs changed for them

[that one guy]

Hmmm..... some interesting questions.. I have always thought 8x8 was pretty cheap, and while I have done it for a couple skills, I always feel much prouder when I work the skills like they were intended to be worked. If I had my way UOA would be on the illegal 3rd party program list, but I know at least half the UO population would probably quit.

While I normally think that skills should take a long time to GM, most skills that I work at high levels get their guaranteed gains (at least sometimes they do....) and that is it through hours of normal gameplay. I think a good time frame of GMing should be about 1-2 months if you play about 2 hours a day. Of course this should change with different skills (ie. taming should take longer because of the power you get from it, lockpicking should be harder because it was hard for me and I don't want everyone else to get off the hook so easily). I think it is total garbage how you can go from 0 to 120 animal lore or anatomy in a few hours, as well as a lot of other skills that you can 8x8 in 1 day of powergaming.

I think that by showing % success on crafting skills that is good enough. I don't think you really need to know that what you are bashing with a sword is too easy for you. Besides, that is what the forums are here for, there are plenty of people to figure out what works best.

I don't really agree with having stat gains for nothing. I think most people would just sit at Brit bank unattended overnight or stuff like that. I think what would be a better idea if possible would be to have stat gains connected to how hard you are working skills. I mean in real life you aren't going to get stronger by lifting a weight 1 time every day, you gain it by working out for a couple hours (well at least you gain it faster that way). If you are continually working a skill there should be only a 2 minute delay or something, but have that only work for skills over 50 or so to prevent see-sawing. I think this would make stat gains reasonable, the people who really want to work on their characters will get benefits and the people who don't obviously miss out.

Um.... I guess that's about for now...

[Basil]

oops forgot this one

<blockquote><hr>

How much should I care about macroing prevention

<hr></blockquote>

depends on what your talking about here.. If somebody has a key jammed in a steal-last target macro to gain, I dont see a problem with it. I mean they will be doing the same damn thing if they are there. I dont see a huge problem with it.

On the other hand if someone is using a carto script 24/7 and making millions of gp a day then yes i think you should crack down a bit /php-bin/shared/images/icons/smile.gif

I personally think it would be wise for OSI to try to work with easy (third party proggy) and make it work for both sides. As it is you cant exactly control them and people who can script it can do tons of dmg to the game. For example the carto bug wasnt anything untill it was a script.. after that people were unattened in carto shops all damn day making easy loot and nobody was busting them /php-bin/shared/images/icons/frown.gif It dosnt take a code fix to simply watch the shops for a few days and scare the hell out of the exploiters.

I've always hated 8x8. I must admit I used it for the one skill it really made sense to use it for...fishing. I would suggest removing the stat gain limit. Both # of stats per day, and the time limit between stat gains. Big deal if someone ping pongs their stats.

[Calypso_]

Just on the macroing:

I dont think that macroing prevention should be considered that important at all. I dont see how macroing can be a problem to the game at all. It still requires time and effort and dedication, to bring characters to Gm in 6/7 skills
It all depends on the way each person likes to play the game.
If you like to have your characters ready real quick to its maximum abilities, so why not? Its a game that we play to have fun, if people have more fun jumping immediately to the ultimate stats, let them enjoy the game that way. I dont see why the time that it takes someone to Gm would affect negatively or positively the game as a whole.
There will always be many players like myself that have more fun going through the natural growing process. I am very much laid back when it comes to UO, and I am in no hurry to Gm anyone. My main character took me 2 years to GM 3 skills, and for instance Evaluate, I never did anything whatsoever to gain skill. I just gained it as I played the game, and one day I was GM. I was really happy, feeling that had been an accomplishment. The same when I GM'd Inscription.
I think it is a lot more fun to play this way, but this is me.
I have friends that dont really start playing the character until it is GM.
Its a different style, but in the end of the day, we all want to have fun, relax, and enjoy the game. Why not let people play it the way that is more enjoyable for each one? (Of course, within the rules).
I might get flamed for this one, but I honestly think that macroing should not be seen as some sort of crime. I may be missing something that I never thought of, and I am openminded enough to change my mind, if someone helps me see how macroing can be a bad thing. But the way I see it now, it doesnt affect me if my neighbor is macroing his chars. I could too, if I wanted.

What there needs to be, is the "casual" gain method and the "power gamer" method.

I know alot of people feel "cheated" by power gamers, but they are a legit segment of the market that pays there $10 like everyone else.

I really don't have any suggestions on how to allow people to powergame, but not abuse/break skill gain. I think 8x8 aside from the whole boating thing, is great, because its painful, boring, repetative, tedious, annoying, etc....basically power gamers get what they want, but they certainly pay a price for it.

I think what 8x8 actually needs, is jut for damn boots not to clog the ocean. Maybe do a little work to boats, that after one hour of unoccupation they simply redeed themselves and go to either the backpack if logged in, or the bank box if logged out. That way, the stupid sea isn't clogged with boats.

Now one thing that I do wonder about is the recent change to fighting skills. Suddenly you can only gain fighting skills against monsters with a certain defense level based on your skill level. For example, start a new warrior. Go pick a fight with a bone knight, or a mummy. I bet you won't gain a bit. But you used to. Now go fight a skele. You gain like mad. I get the concept, but again, how do advanced players train?

Take for example the guy that is gm magery, eval, med, resist, etc...With the onset of AOS, and spell channel weaps, many mages decided to start training a weapon skill. But instead of fighting demons, liches, blood ele's and all that good stuff I used to be able to, I have to go fight skeletons? Arg, its a pure, 100% waste of my time. I actually don't have the option to gain skill at monsters appropriate to my "overall" skill level, simply because of my fighting skill level. That definatly needs to be addressed, since for advancec players, you have gone backwards a step and forced us to macro away on monsters that we have no interested in. I haven't been to Yew Cemetary for years, but now I find myself attended macro'ing away there day after day to gain archery, when I'd rather be out collecting goodies and such.

I think all skill gain should perhaps take into account overall skill level, and maybe adjust gains, at least for weapon skills. I mean if a person has gm magery or gm swords, and decides to take up fencing or archery, you really shouldn't force him to go back to haven to train again.

[-Soken-]

<blockquote><hr>


How much should I care about macroing prevention? Should I eliminate 8x8? If skill gain were more predictable and sane, would you even need it?


<hr></blockquote>

Hmmm yes I would have to stay some 8x8ing and macroing is kind of crazy. You can 120 anata from 0 in a under 2 hours. If skill gain was more predictable and sane yes 8x8 wouldnt be necessary. I would rather have fun and gain decently at the same time then have to 8x8 all my skills.

<blockquote><hr>


How long should it reasonably take to GM a skill? Should all skills be the same?


<hr></blockquote>
Totally depends on the skill. Obviously some skills should NOT take as long as they do take, while others should take longer. I think taming, barding and some of the other hard skills should be kept as they are. Taming still takes a REALLY long time to GM (compared to other skills), same with poisoning, lockpicking etc.

Absolutly NO to part b of the question. All skills should not be the same for obvious reasons.

<blockquote><hr>


For difficulty-based skills, what information do you need? If a task isn't hard enough for you, should it tell you that?


<hr></blockquote>

I dunno on this one.

<blockquote><hr>


I'm thinking about decoupling stat gain completely from skill gain -- so every 15 minutes, you would just gain a stat point, up to your daily limit. Is that a bad idea?


<hr></blockquote>

Ya i dont really get this either... so every 15 min youll gain a stat? What stat would gain? hmm.... If thats the case, Id say no, Keep it with the skills. Dont just have you auto-magically gain a str point every 15 min. =/


Anyways thats what I thinK! /php-bin/shared/images/icons/smile.gif
Cheers all

[Megalon]

Unless you're going to implement ROT I don't see how you're going to control the macroers. As for stat gain, as long as it's working as advertised (I personally haven't had any problems gaining) I don't see why it should be changed.

[Kethinov]

If anything you should make skill gain easier and take less time.

Make all skills 3-4 day projects, yet consume resources. Dropping 100 to 200k on Magery plus 4 days of 8x8ing is a substantial commitment. Anyone who says it should take more than that just wants to be leet while everyone else works hard. /php-bin/shared/images/icons/wink.gif

[ChrisMercury]

I don't macro. I don't 8X8, so it's difficult for me to assess them. However, I would like to see a system that would somehow make macroing no more(or less) effective than a more natural skill gain through game play.
Keep in mind, I'm a roleplayer, so I'm a firm believer that character development leads to stronger abilities, and not that stronger abilities are needed to develop characters.

Honestly, I don't believe in the standard game system of stat and skill gain.

I believe that each character should set their stats(up to 225 point limit) at character creation. I think that gaining or losing points(to switch stats later or increased limit due to a powerscroll) should be very slow. People don't just grow much smarter, stronger, or faster in a matter of hours, nevermind days.

I think all skill should gain at relatively the same rate, and that rate should benefit from a high intelligence score. This benefit should not be too extreme. The last thing we need is for mages to take less than a day to 7xgm like warriors used to. Perhaps different skills could benefit from different stats. Tinkering might be easier to master if you have high dexterity, for instance, while Magic Resistance might benefit from a high physical strength.

I think three months to a year(depending on how much you play) should be enough time to gm any skill. Nobody should gm a skill faster than three months, and even casual players should have gmed skills inside a year.

SOme sort of indicator for difficulty-based non-craft skills would be helpful. For instance, when we provoke a creature, and there's no(or very low) chance of gaining, there ought to be a special message indicating the ease of your success.

As for decoupling stat gain from skill gain, see above. I think stats as they exist now are nonsensical, and backwards. Skills gain should depend on stats, not vice-versa.

[ChrisMercury]

I'm of exactly the opposite opinion. I'd like to see skill gain consume ~less~ resources. A person should ~not~ need to make hundreds or thousands of heating stands or oil cloths or gnarled staffs to gm skills. I'd like to see skill gain to be less resource oriented, and more time oriented. *nod* 3-4 days is not enough time, and 100-200k in gold is too much to spend. Just my opinion. :-)

[Aegean]

Very interesting...

How much should I care about macroing prevention?
Since UOA is a legal macro program, you might as well just allow it. People will find a way, regardless of the measures put in place.

Should I eliminate 8x8?
Yes.

If skill gain were more predictable and sane, would you even need it?
No. I think it's rather ridiculous that there are these magic "runs" out there.

How long should it reasonably take to GM a skill?
40 hours. Just my opinion.

Should all skills be the same?

Yes, yes, yes! Every skill should take the same amount of work, BUT they should also provide a similar amount of reward. (a whole other can of worms)

For difficulty-based skills, what information do you need?
Possibly a way to see the difficulty before you begin. I would use chest traps as an example (trapped: level 3), but remove trap is worthless any way. (more worms)

If a task isn't hard enough for you, should it tell you that?
Yes. It can be frustrating not knowing if you are wasting your time or not. People want to know that their efforts are worthwhile.

I'm thinking about decoupling stat gain completely from skill gain -- so every 15 minutes, you would just gain a stat point, up to your daily limit. Is that a bad idea?
I wouldn't mind, but stat gain should still be tied to an action. Put in a weight(STR), a book(INT), and some weighted gloves(DEX) that can simply be double clicked for a gain every 15 minutes. I just don't like the idea of sitting in a chair for an hour and gaining 4 strength.

[Jasco_GL]

"- How much should I care about macroing prevention? Should I eliminate 8x8? If skill gain were more predictable and sane, would you even need it?

<font color=blue>I do not think macroing is that bad, particularly if the same gains could be gained with regular play. That is the real issue here. If there was no difference, nobody would have a valid complaint. There are some that derive great game pleasure setting up macros to do tasks. If they are gaining no more than convenience, it is not an unfair advantage. Somehow make it so skills are gained with game play.</font color=blue>

- How long should it reasonably take to GM a skill? Should all skills be the same?

<font color=blue>Time required to gm… I think a month is a good time, maybe 60+ hours of play time. Enough to feel you have completed something of value. Not all skills should take the same time. The more powerful the skill’s properties, the longer it should take. </font color=blue>

- For difficulty-based skills, what information do you need? If a task isn't hard enough for you, should it tell you that?

<font color=blue>More info is very welcome! It would be nice if skill gain could be coupled to risk in some way. FInancial or physical as appropriate.</font color=blue>

- I'm thinking about decoupling stat gain completely from skill gain -- so every 15 minutes, you would just gain a stat point, up to your daily limit. Is that a bad idea?

<font color=blue>I think it would depend on the replacing mechanism. Coupled skill/stats are realistic. I do think it should be predictable, which again is realistic. If you work out for 8 hours, you should have results which follow curves known to those who study physiology. I have always thought stamina should come from skill use, as well as simply running around with a full pack… what else should you get from simply doing just that?

The crux to my complaints with stat gain are the very slow rates and getting painted into a corner. My bard/mage lost a ton of str to P16 and I really have no means of getting it back. He is a 7x GM and has no room to ‘exercise’ some heavy skill. I feel a solution should exist whereby a character can simply work a stat by doing a skill which places demands on that stat. Work mining, with no gain, except to push his stats around. Working out IRL does work, and doesn’t seem to ruin people’s careers *big grin*

I can imagine the dOoDs hanging around a uo gymnasium all puffing about how strong, dextrous, etc they are… make it public, like a dart board’s bark…hehe. Bragging in game is big business.</font color=blue>

So, stuff like that. Please feel free to discuss amongst yourselves . . .

MrTact "

<font color=blue>Jasco</font color=blue>

[maligant]

To jump down the long postings... I'm going to post my ideas even if I repeat others since if more people have the same idea and post then that is what usually gets looked into first.

8x8 sometimes is the only sane... insane way to gain skill. Sometimes trying to gm a skill naturally is nice and all, but when at gm you get benefits or simply you don't fizzle at resurrection... then getting that gm is worth it. 8x8 isn't a walk in the park either... it's not rocket science, but it can take hours to just get a gain run. an 8x8 grid is pretty large and I don't know anyone that tries to move it's perimeter yet alone know just where that perimeter begins since that would be a square with 64 spots.... And you can't really unattend macro that. You can unattend macro on a boat.. but just put in more sea monsters and water ellies. Simple solution to me. Boats can outrun them... but if you aren't there and hit one.. then it will be your death. And maybe make the sea a little more worthwhile as well.

Make skill gain harder or not? Well I wouldn't say it really is easy... People say they gm necro in two days... but that doesn't mean you play a few minutes and pop... it means ten hours of straight gaming and working on that skill alone. For me... That is about a month or two or more of working that skill. I rarely work a skill for more than one hour... yet alone work on that same skill a few times a week. If someone puts the time in then let them gm it. You can beat FFX say two months... but someone else can beat it in a day... simply because they put all their time in winning at once instead of a little here and there and doing more exploring, talking to people... etc.

I think a neat idea would be to give the message you can't use this spell, etc... because you are not knowledgeable enough. Like taming an animal you don't have the skill for.. it simply won't let you. Or maybe a message like you are sufficient in casting this or creating this... you can't learn any more when working this spell or crafting this item.

Stat cap.... I never thought much about it... I knew the see-saw ordeal came in and that stat cap was to control that... but still stats seem to not really give too much advantage over someone that doesn't have the same ones. Of course maybe in pvp... but having a 15 stat cap... max stats... 225... that is 15 days if you started with zero stats.. but since you start with so many already... just say 12 days of work... two weeks to get desired stats... the difference between 80 and 100 dex isn't that noticeable either... and with 80 to 100 int is an extra ebolt.. but if you have gm med or focus... you can gain mana back nice and fast and get that ebolt off in a few seconds... so ultimately stat gain really only affects pvp players. Pvm can deal with less this or that... at least I can.

Thats my thoughts.

[Jasco_GL]

I have to agree with Jasco 100%, he is right on target!

The thought struck me.... why not break up skill gains with having to perform quests to move further? The quest engine is wonderful, and this even seems feasible from my ignorant view.

[maligant]

well I hope you agree with yourself 100% I saw you say that.. then went to read the post.. then noticed the sigs are the same and then noticed the posters were the same.

[Jasco_GL]

A keen eye indeed! /php-bin/shared/images/icons/uhoh3.gif

I liked your suggestion to add some danger to the seas.

[Moonglum]

Skill Gain - Should be considered for each skill, taking into account the 2 major playstyles PvM &amp; PvP. The last thing a PvPer wants to do is sit for months training his warrior/mage just to be able to fight, so I would think the "standard" combat skills should be fairly easy. Its when you want to get some of the more powerful skills in the game, esp PvM-wise (Barding, Taming) it should be more difficult and time consuming. Craft skills are primarily about having the resources and should stay the way they currently are, they don't seem broken.

To be honest I like skill gain how it is currently in the game except for the basic combat skills (tactics, weapon-skill).

[Shawshank]

I like that idea of using items to gain in stats
like "you read a book and feel a little smarter"
or "you lift a weight and feel a little stronger"
and "you play with the rubix cube and feel a little more dextrous"
obviously limited my 15 mins per gain or so.

The real question about skill gain is to consider why people do what they do. When UO began, GMing a skill meant months and months of *work*. But people put in the effort because it actually *meant* something to be a GM (hell, it actually meant a lot if you were a Master of a skill).

So, in coordination with removing 8x8 and making skill gain a bit more regulated (something like RoT), why not turn it into a gold sink. I could see it working like this....

Each Earth day you are allowed to "buy up" a given skill by 10 points. The cost for the skill would follow a schedule like this...
<pre>
Start End Cost Total
0 10 30 300
10.1 20 60 594
20.1 30 120 1,188
30.1 40 240 2,376
40.1 50 480 4,752
50.1 60 960 9,504
60.1 70 1,920 19,008
70.1 80 3,840 38,016
80.1 90 7,680 76,032
90.1 100 15,360 152,064
100.1 110 30,720 304,128
110.1 120 61,440 608,256
Total 1,216,218</pre>


This means that you have the option each earth day to *buy* up one skill by 10 points (gold sink and keep people from macroing). You could also make it without the number of skills restriction, so you can buy up as many skills as you want in one day but still limit it to 10 points. This would let people decide (based on how much gold they had on hand) to either go work on the skill or buy it up for the day.

End result is a nice gold sink (would cost 1.2 million to get a skill to Legendary) and would make someone take 12 days (about 2 weeks) to buy a skill from zero to 120. This wouldn't stop all macroing but those with the cash would most likely just buy up the skill for the day.

As for the difficulty based thing, it would be nice (though I usually come to Stratics and look it up) if in-game you could "consider" a particular monster and have it tell you is it's too hard or too easy for your current skills (like we do with crafting now and the success percentages).

Stat gain should remain tied to skills; it's a shame stats don't affect skills anymore.

[the REAL dupre]

i like that idea! quests per level would be good. but tedious if you have to do one for every skill you do, as for anti-macroing code, lets be honest here, you wouldnt be able to do it. anything a macroer can do, a person can claim is them, i dont think macroing is good(unattended) but most of my newer characters or ones ive had to change from the publishes introduced have been macro'd and 8x8'd where applicable, ive played 5 1/2 years now, and i dont want to sit there and go through magery every 3 months, at this time, i want to enjoy PLAYING, not gaining.

8x8 is good for people gaining, but not for those who dont use it, i think a resourse square should exist, but cant you mix it up a bit? not always the even 8 squares? 8 then 3 then 9... that would hamper macro'ers but would still leave those who want to gain in a quicker fashion with an option to do so, because to gain there odd square system youd have to be attended.

Most of my main use characters now were made post UOR, i did most of my provoking at the hedge maze, my taming was done slooooooowly on ice isle in T2A + delucia, smithing took me months and months to get to GM, but power hour was a major factor in when id gain skill.

how about special items which speed up skill gain? brain food ;-) that would certainly give life to the cooking profession, and perhaps in a later scenario, let tinkers make brain infusers? you sit in it and perform tasks, and gain at 3xGGS or something? that would make it interesting /php-bin/shared/images/icons/smile.gif and perhaps begging to guildmasters with GM begging would get you skill points in a quicker fashion?

as for how long it takes to GM a skill, that depends on the skill, Magery, Taming and Barding should take a longer time because of there substantial money making/lack of risk approach to the world. The rest, a week per skill, so Macing/Tact/Anat would all rise at the same time and therefore would all be done in a week.

If a task isn't hard enough for you, should it tell you that? HELL YEH! but you should have to goto a guild master of that skill, and tell it what you're doing, it checks your skill and says "do something harder" dont be specific in what needs training.

Stat gain is FAR too slow, you can GM tailoring in a day, and only have enough strength to carry 10 bolts of cloth?!?!? perhaps add serpent blood into the game? ;-) or steroids, brain food, and repetition for dex.

[Merle Corey]

<blockquote><hr>

- How much should I care about macroing prevention? Should I eliminate 8x8? If skill gain were more predictable and sane, would you even need it?

<hr></blockquote>
I think you shouldn't care at all. Raise-through-use systems reward repetition and thus tend to promote macroing. There is nothing you can do about it.

Now, as for 8x8, I can think of two reasons why it should not be eliminated. First, as someone has already mentioned, this will make the split between "haves" and "have-nots" (veterans and newer players, in this case) all the more pronounced. I don't think we need more of that, no matter how "proud" certain veterans may feel about their "achievements" in the game. This kind of stuff tends to drive newer players away from the game, and I had a chance to witness myself how exactly that works.

Second reason is this... face it, we are deep in the realm of the elder game. Champion spawns, anyone? Doom Gauntlet? Anyway, the majority of the fun in the game these days is pretty high end. Getting there -- which means training -- is not fun. It's fun the first time you do it. Maybe the second time. When you have a couple of accounts, training becomes a chore real soon.

Finally, powergamers will always end up being better off than casual players. They will have better connections, more powerful systems, more time on their hands and so on. You can't make all players equal in real life. IMNSHO you shouldn't try to do it in game, either.

<blockquote><hr>

- How long should it reasonably take to GM a skill? Should all skills be the same?

<hr></blockquote>
Are we talking about someone who is new to the game or someone who has been around for a long time?

I am in favor of a system that will force newer players to gain slowly while veterans would be able to gain faster (again, the reasoning is that GMing a skill for the umteenth time is not fun). No idea if it can be implemented at all, though.

I am not sure whether all skills should take the same time to GM. Probably not, but I don't see how you can decide which skills should raise faster or slower.

<blockquote><hr>

- For difficulty-based skills, what information do you need? If a task isn't hard enough for you, should it tell you that?

<hr></blockquote>
Two messages. "You cannot gain because this task is too hard for you" and "you cannot gain because this task is too simple for you". And if you end up doing this, please make sure it's not spamming you like the Valor virtue message does ("Yeah, yeah, I know I cannot gain any more Valor. Will you please shut up already, you stupid game?")

<blockquote><hr>

- I'm thinking about decoupling stat gain completely from skill gain -- so every 15 minutes, you would just gain a stat point, up to your daily limit. Is that a bad idea?

<hr></blockquote>
I would tentatively label this idea as bad, yes. It makes no sense whatsoever (well, ok, the whole game makes little sense but this has to be a more superior example of senselessness), and in addition to that, it violates the "raise-through-use" design of UO. I don't become stronger by just standing there and doing nothing at all.

If anything, I'd say stat gain rate should be increased and the cap raised or removed. 12 points per day every 15 minutes is ridiculously low.

----

Now... if I have one request, it will be this: before you mess with 8x8 and skill gain, please give us those "soulstones". That would alleviate the issue of reprofiling existing characters, solving most problems associated with re-training your characters again and again (because you've made a bad choice early on, because your characters aren't exactly fun to play anymore due to rampant nerfs, because you just want to try another template, and so forth). With that in place, I don't think a drastic measure like getting rid of 8x8 would be that painful.

Regards,
M.C.

The thought struck me.... why not break up skill gains with having to perform quests to move further? The quest engine is wonderful, and this even seems feasible from my ignorant view.

Because not everyone likes to do quests.... I hate them. They are boring to me..

This means that you have the option each earth day to *buy* up one skill by 10 points (gold sink and keep people from macroing). You could also make it without the number of skills restriction, so you can buy up as many skills as you want in one day but still limit it to 10 points. This would let people decide (based on how much gold they had on hand) to either go work on the skill or buy it up for the day.

End result is a nice gold sink (would cost 1.2 million to get a skill to Legendary) and would make someone take 12 days (about 2 weeks) to buy a skill from zero to 120. This wouldn't stop all macroing but those with the cash would most likely just buy up the skill for the day.


1. There are to many "gold sinks" now.....
2. I have played three years and I cant even afford PS's., and I for one am tired of all the "gold sinks" in this game now.....armor, regs, wpns, jewelry, and item insurance, etc., etc. bah!
3. With Advanced characters it would not take 12 days.....
4. A game based on work to gain skills, is the best and not bought skills either.....Work the skills as they are intended to gain in them, or dont gain anything......

[Mordanna]

How much should I care about macroing prevention?
enough to discourage unattended macroing. but if we have a skill gain system that actually works, i don't think that is much of an issue.

Should I eliminate 8x8? If skill gain were more predictable and sane, would you even need it?
you essentially answered your own question. if we have a working, reliable skill gain system, "crutches" like 8x8 and "hot spot" methods aren't needed.

How long should it reasonably take to GM a skill? Should all skills be the same?
it shouldn't be possible to GM a skill "overnight". please don't cater to the "i want it all and i want it NOW" crowd. and no, not all skills should be the same. there needs to be a learning curve, or people will get bored of the game quickly. the speed with which a skill is trained up should be in reasonable relation to the benefit you get from it.

For difficulty-based skills, what information do you need? If a task isn't hard enough for you, should it tell you that?
yes, i think it should. this applies already to the taming skill ("that wasn't even challenging") and i find it important that players are not left in the dark if something they do is not hard enough to let them gain.

I'm thinking about decoupling stat gain completely from skill gain -- so every 15 minutes, you would just gain a stat point, up to your daily limit. Is that a bad idea?
i think it's a good idea to decouple stat gains from skill gains now that we do not get a stat bonus anymore. however i do not like the idea that stat gains are a "free lunch". maybe you could come up with a different solution for that.

I'm not saying you don't *have* to buy skills just saying that it would now be an option. You can *never* have too many gold sinks. Advanced characters take real money and they are templates, not individual skills. You can still raise skills the old-fashioned way and with a form of RoT implemented, skill gains would be much better regulated (and would cut down on macroing a bit).

Two messages. "You cannot gain because this task is too hard for you" and "you cannot gain because this task is too simple for you". And if you end up doing this, please make sure it's not spamming you like the Valor virtue message does ("Yeah, yeah, I know I cannot gain any more Valor. Will you please shut up already, you stupid game?")

Ya that would tend to make me log out in a big hurry.....I have to put up with enough spam without npcs doing it....../php-bin/shared/images/icons/smile.gif

Advanced char still have skills they did not have to work. Its the same thing. If you buy it you dont have to work it.
And yes there is to many "gold sinks" in this game. Not everyone makes a ton of gold on here like some... And with jewelry on top of it....skill gain is to easily bought now without adding more ways to buy it.......Skills are meant to be worked NOT bought!


As far as I am concerned 8x8 is fast enough for anyone that wants to gain skills....At least he is working it and not buying it.....

[bltaylor]

How much should I care about macroing prevention ? Should I eliminate 8x8? If skill gain were more predictable and sane, would you even need it?

You shoudn't care. As long as it is legitimate skill gaining, it shouldn't matter. No 8x8 isnt as effective as most people think, especially for magery gains. NO.

How long to GM? Should all be the same?

This is too difficult. We don't have access to the information you do on the amount of players in game, and the percentages breakdown on the age of accounts. This ultimately will determine the reaction to any action. Not everyone reads stratics, you know? I for one think all skills should be the same. If I'm working A SKILL, why should it take me any longer to GM than anything else that someome else is working ?

If a task isn't hard enough should it tell me?

Yes, but I like a previous suggestion of making it hidable and also with messages that are skill related

Stat gain every 15 minutes related to skill gain ?

No on gain every 15 minutes UNLESS you are working a skill. I like the coupling of the two(stat &amp; skill), but make stat gains related to certain skills like under powerhour. (e.g have to work pickpocket to gain dex, magery skills to gain int, and physical skills to gain str)

How long to GM? Should all be the same?

This is too difficult. We don't have access to the information you do on the amount of players in game, and the percentages breakdown on the age of accounts. This ultimately will determine the reaction to any action. Not everyone reads stratics, you know? I for one think all skills should be the same. If I'm working A SKILL, why should it take me any longer to GM than anything else that someome else is working ?

I dont think they all should take the same amount of time....the more powerful a skill the more time it should take to gm it. And it also is a challenge to work harder skills. If everything was same there would be no challenge and No reason to play. In other words, if you do one skill no sense doing another, because its all the same, every time, for every skill...........boring....


I personally think they should have left the skills and the ways to gain skills, pre-GGS, pre-AoS, pre-Advanced char, and pre-Jewelry.......it was a heck of alot better than it is now....

I agree with the rest of your post...

Just a couple of ideas I had. I didn;t thinkt eh gold sink was that bad an idea, but I was thinking more along the lines of the old games, where you got experience (our equivalent of fame/karma I guess) for figthing thins, and then could 'spend' thos experience points to raise your skills.

People got get 'skill points' by PvM, crafting, quests, fame/karma or whatever other system to reward people fits with their skills/playstyle.

Also, when I first played, skill gain was a goal and interesting. Now that I've developed 6 or 7 chars, training the remaining 2 is just tedious, I'd rather have their skills up where I can play (PvM for me mainly). The current virtue system may be partly working towards this now.

Someone mentioned a powergame way and a non-powergame way. Something like this may be viable, if perhaps there was some extra reward for the time spent non-powergaming. No idea what that reward may be, nothing too dreamatic or the powergamers will complain the have to do it the other way, and not too cheap that no one will non-powergame.

Justa few options.

[imported_Kojak]

all I can say is "thank god all my characters are almost done"

(nothing good can come of this)

I don't think I've ever read a scarier post than this one - hehe

[Chinalilly]

<blockquote><hr>

- How much should I care about macroing prevention? Should I eliminate 8x8? If skill gain were more predictable and sane, would you even need it?

<hr></blockquote>

As much as I love the ability to get fast skill gain via 8x8 (at least via my inept method of doing that), yes. I do believe that 8x8 should be eliminated. It makes skills like magery, vet, lore, music, peace, necro ... a huge joke because each one can be had in a day or two by sailing on a boat.

I doubt that you guys intended the anti macro code to be used for the purposes of rapid skill gain as it has been.


<blockquote><hr>

How long should it reasonably take to GM a skill? Should all skills be the same?

<hr></blockquote>

That's kind of a moot point now. The fact that one can spend $29.99 on a character, and then put on some jewelery to get enhanced skills to get to GM, or higher with the use of powerscrolls, within 1/2 hour of character creation, is sad.

Yes, I speak from experience. I bought a bard a couple weeks ago. I have worked up 3 bards on 3 other shards, but didn't have one on the shard I'm currently playing, and I'm tired of working up skills I've done multiple times in the past.

Over 4 days I got to 110 peace/music; GM magery/med; and high 80's eval. Once there, I hit a vendor and bought a +6 provocation ring, and then met a friend who gave me a +8 provocation bracelet. I immediately had 99 provocation. Can't get much faster than that!

So the only real way to get rid of "instant GM" is to get rid of advanced character purchase, and skill enhancing jewelery. But I doubt very much that either is within your power to do so.

<blockquote><hr>

For difficulty-based skills, what information do you need? If a task isn't hard enough for you, should it tell you that?

<hr></blockquote>

Yes, that would take alot of the guess work out of working skills. Right now it's a guessing game as to what works and what doesn't.

I know you guys give us these fancy tables and all these "great" formulas to work with so we can figure things out. But I need to tell you that not all of us understand these formulas you guys come up with. They are too complex/complicated. The barding formula for example, is completely and totally beyond me and many that I know, despite much time and effort put into trying to understand it. The new Magic Resistance formula that Vex posted is just as fruity.

Why can't you guys come up with something simple!? Something where we don't have to pull out graph paper and a calculator and spend so much time trying to figure out what to do to get gains or how things work? Sometimes I feel I'm in math class instead of a computer game where I am supposed to be having fun. Sometimes I feel this game is just too much trouble to be worth it. It's deeply, deeply frustrating/php-bin/shared/images/icons/frown.gif

<blockquote><hr>

- I'm thinking about decoupling stat gain completely from skill gain -- so every 15 minutes, you would just gain a stat point, up to your daily limit. Is that a bad idea?

<hr></blockquote>

Depends on what you mean by "just gain a stat point". I would like to be able to control exactly what stat point I will be gaining. I personally would like to see the cap lifted off of stat gains. The cap, even 10 a day, makes it near impossible for a new character to be able to do anything in this game besides work skills and die alot. This game, especially with the changes to the monster AI, needs to have strong, intelligent, dextrous characters to play it. You aren't giving us that with a cap of 10 stats per day. It takes literally weeks to get desirable stats so that we can take a character out and be effective at anything.

[Lord Marius]

I've read through this entire thread as it is now.. I have some rebuttle and opinions /php-bin/shared/images/icons/smile.gif

<blockquote><hr>

How much should I care about macroing prevention? Should I eliminate 8x8? If skill gain were more predictable and sane, would you even need it?

<hr></blockquote>
As many have said.. if there was a good skill gain system in place the macroing would almost be more of a hassle to setup the macro then just going out and playing. Of course I would still try to prevent AFK macroing.

As for my suggestion for skill gain. The GGS system was a good idea. But having different times for different sets of total skill points was a bad idea. Training a skill is training a skill. 8x8 has its good points and its bad points depending on how you look at it. I'm a powergamer. I wont play a character until all my chosen skills are at their max. I also enjoy working skills. When I cant gain a skill, right now its stealing...I'm down to GGS only /php-bin/shared/images/icons/mad.gif, its aggrivating and takes the fun out of the game for me. But the skill shouldnt just raise like focus from 0 either. IMO, most skills should be used based. You sucessfully use the skill so many times, you should theoretically learn and get better. How often that is I cant say because of the current ways you can gain skills. 8x8 is drastically faster than killing ogrelords all day in Despise using EVs.

<blockquote><hr>

How long should it reasonably take to GM a skill? Should all skills be the same?

<hr></blockquote>
That would be directly tied to what you are doing. If you're actively using the skill more than the next guy, you should gain more. All skills should also gain the same. Especially now! Many of you who posted in here have mentioned taming as being the all powerful. Its really not. Sure my character may not be taking the damage.. but my pets are. You must also consider the fact that a paladin with the Zyronic Claw can take a blood elemental faster than my WW can. AoS balanced alot of classes whether anybody wants to admit it or not. Paladins have become the new "uber" class when it comes to PvM. For those of you who think a peace tamer rox.. try a peace pally and some good equipment. So with the balance issues that have been implemented.. why the need for any skill to be harder than another?

<blockquote><hr>

For difficulty-based skills, what information do you need? If a task isn't hard enough for you, should it tell you that?

<hr></blockquote>
Something that would be a very nice addition is for magery.. have the minimum skill requirement on the spell page like necro/pally books have. Also I would recommdn implementing this to determine good/bad for skill gain and could even be used to warn players of the "danger" level of monsters. This is a part of DAoC. I dont remember the specifics.. I'll apply this to two skills. Taming first. When you use the taming skill and get the target cursor.. the animal/monster will highlight a specific color based on your skills.. (yellow would be easy, orange for medium, red for hard) A warrior would be able to view it by highlighting the creature using the war mode cursor.

<blockquote><hr>

I'm thinking about decoupling stat gain completely from skill gain -- so every 15 minutes, you would just gain a stat point, up to your daily limit. Is that a bad idea?

<hr></blockquote>
I wouldnt uncouple them. If you're using a STR based skill you should be able to gain a STR point and the same for INT and DEX. You should not however have to gain in the skill or anything, have a time limit, skill pointed up and so forth.. much like they are supposed to be now.

[Vidala]

In PvP, things get retooled so often that templates phase in and out about every 6 months or so, or at least with every major expansion/update (AOS being the most recent). Now I do agree skills are way to easy to GM now, but you have to find balance in the whole thing. Making changes where people have to drastically redo their template to keep up with the PvP scene every 6 months is a nuissance as it is, but if skill gain is made even harder, then it'll be a huge thorn in the arse.

What I'm getting at, is not to make skill gain easier to make the fixing of templates easier, it's to make quality decisions on changes so PvP templates don't have to be changed so often. As it is, I'm tedious to do anything with my characters knowing that overnight, I could've wasted several weeks changing a characters template to something that will literally be worthless overnight.

[Azrile]

MrTact,

In my opinion, this would be a waste of time. 'fixing' skill gain is kind of like using fiction ingame.... it just cannot work. (no kidding here). As soon as you make skill gain possible through normal gameplay, you make it incredibly easy for the maxers... and if you make it challanging for maxers, then you make it near impossible for people to gain through normal gameplay.

It is also impossible to balance skills against each other when trying to even out skill gain. A skill like provoke, you use one time every few mins while hunting... but a skill like weapon or magery, you use every few seconds.
I think things are far from perfect, but I don't think there is anything you can do to make them better... any changes you make will make skill gain 'different', but not necessarily better. Unless you plan on going through each skill individually, taking out all the possible 'training' techniqes and balance it so that gains come steadily during normal gameplay.. However, I think that is impossible, since players will always find a new training technique..

Just from an historical perspective... it took about 1month for players to figure out 8x8 once the anti-macro code was put in with UO:Ren. It probably took 6 weeks for the first 'guide to 8x8ing' was posted here on stratics. Take a look at all the ways players 'beat the dev team', like the lamp room, macroing at artifact sites etc etc. Players will always find a way to train faster then is expected, so why bother changing the method now. Players will not do things the way you think they will, they will find the easiest way possible.

So I think you will spend 6 months trying to fix 8x8ing, and players will spend about 3 weeks figuring out how to beat it... and we will be back where we are now, except we will have lost 6 months of dev time.

The only suggestion I would make is to shorten the GGS times.

This all comes from the perspective of a player that is very tired of the dev team taking sideways steps. Too much dev time is spent redoing old systems and in the end, just makeing them different, not necessarily better. IMHO, that dev time should be spent adding new things.

Besides a couple skills that seem to have been effected with AOS (parry for example), I don't think fixing skill gains is worth the time it would take.

I suggest you enjoy your vacation.

[haohju]

If the action for a skill gain is pleasant, I will not do a macro act.

The greatest fault of training is that the skill which is not gained in skill exists, enjoying itself. In order to gain animal taming, it is not interesting to train an animal intently. It will be very pleasant if an animal has the opportunity of a skill gain by giving a command. In order to gain stealing, is the act which robs a pack horse of the steak of a fish a joke?

If pleasure is in the action for skill�@gain, however difficult it may be, I will finish.

azrile,
I couldnt agree with you more. The dev teams time, after all the fixes are done of course, which may take a while, would be better spent in my opinion, developing new things for the players.
But I stress, the lag problem needs to be addressed and all the bugs need to be fixed first, and I mean all of them, and some game play issues, that I hope are being worked on.
We could use more spawn sites, and some new creatures in the game. And one idea is a dungeon where pets are not allowed except as ridables. This along with the hopes that pet/creature hps get balanced out so that tamer can hunt again, also. There are to many players, with pets sitting in the stables, afraid to hunt with them.
Anyway, your post is right on in my opinion.

Go on vacation, have a good time, and when you get back, dont change anything except ggs on this subject, as azrile suggested. This whole idea is scarying me. /php-bin/shared/images/icons/crazy.gif

[TeamScheme]

<blockquote><hr>


- How much should I care about macroing prevention? Should I eliminate 8x8? If skill gain were more predictable and sane, would you even need it?


<hr></blockquote>

Get rid of 8x8, and use something like ROT, which is predictable and sane and makes it pointless to macro for high end skill.

<blockquote><hr>


- How long should it reasonably take to GM a skill? Should all skills be the same?


<hr></blockquote>

In theory, since all skills take the same amount out of your total pool of 700, they should be equally useful and take the same amount of time to GM.

<blockquote><hr>


- For difficulty-based skills, what information do you need? If a task isn't hard enough for you, should it tell you that?


<hr></blockquote>

If you do this, give the optionto turn it off.

<blockquote><hr>


- I'm thinking about decoupling stat gain completely from skill gain -- so every 15 minutes, you would just gain a stat point, up to your daily limit. Is that a bad idea?


<hr></blockquote>

That's pretty much what it is now... I just remember to use Arms Lore every 15 minutes. The skills I really use have nothing to do with stat gain.

[Saharah]

I personally don't have a problem with macroing or even unattended macroing. I think if some players want to gm skills in a hurry, go out and play and have fun it's fine. Same with 8x8. It doesn't concern me. Personally I like working most of my skills as intended, but I have used 8x8 for fishing. It's boring and it was still slow. I also used it to gm magery after working it to 87 on my own. Boring, it took hours, took tons of regs, I got no money from it. Whats the harm there? I macroed my tailor from about 70 to gm...it still took me a month even then! lmao The point here is, I am not a great powergamer.....I just play for fun either way, but have no problem with these "issues". Using exploits for monetary gain...yes you should definitely be on top of that!

I dont really have much of an opinion on stat gain other than, as a new player, I remember hoarding things to sell. I had lots of trouble carrying hides, armor, weapons ect that I scrounged for on a daily basis. Back then see sawing was used alot to get stats where they were at least acceptable. I am not sure it should be that easy, but perhaps giving new characters the option to start out with say 150 skill pts to work with upon creation of a new char might be a solution. A max of say 60 maybe even 50 to each stat allowed at that point, then working stats as it stands now seems fine to me. If it's not broken, don't break it. =]


Difficulty Based Skills...

I don't think we need this much hand holding. One of my characters is a tamer and I am constantly asked "what should I tame". This question has more often than not, led to some very long lasting friendships and alliances in game and in real life. I like helping and I like communicating with people. Besides there are lots of good resources out there for people and I often direct them to stratics or elsewhere [Looks around nervously] for good information regarding skill gain.





Should I eliminate 8x8? If skill gain were more predictable and sane, would you even need it?





A question for MrTact: Are you implying that the current ggs isn't predictable and in fact wasn't a sane move? *grins*

[Neva Darcan]

When you first start playing UO, you don't know all tips and tricks that others do.

In my opinion, 8x8 is best for vets. The ones that have already built a character, or are building a new one. They, like me, want to reach the finished product as soon as possible as to start playing with it.

Vets have already been experienced the fun and excitement of working a new characters skills. Now, at least for me, if I do it the "old fashioned way", it's just for the memories.

Macroing - It's not so much the macroing that is going on, but the program being used to do it. Fully functional automated do anything scripting program that you should be worried about.

All skills should not be the same to GM. Taming should be much harder to GM than melee skills and so forth.

About the only skills left that are actually difficult to GM are lockpicking, taming and discordance. And even discord is easy if you use the above mentioned scripting program. Unfortunately for me, I don't cheat. /php-bin/shared/images/icons/frown.gif

Anyway. Good luck in whatever you decide.

[shandor]

you could make the skill gain system base on number of skill uses instead of time as in the ggs.

this way gains will be very predictable, the powergamers will still be able to raise skills fast while casual gamers know they will gain after a while.

8x8 should not be removed unless you find a way to implement similar fast gains without allowing those uber fast gains as during powerhour.

a time of 3-4 days is an ok time for a skill to be gmed, and especially skills like poisoning or lockpicking should be made easier to be comparable to the gains of other skills. so yes, all skills should take the same time or number of uses to gm.

about difficulty based skills, i dont see anything wrong in telling the player that a task is too easy, it might safe a new player from wasting his time on mongbats when he would need skeletons.

stat gains were nice during ph time due to the seesaw method, but a bit too fast.
atm they are too slow, an artificial limit on the daily gains does not serve anyone well.
the stat gains can be tied to skill gains, but should also be based on the number of skill uses, not a random generator or a timer.

-shandor

[Azrile]

'A question for MrTact: Are you implying that the current ggs isn't predictable and in fact wasn't a sane move? *grins*'

That is one of the points I was trying to make in my post. Every lead designer/producer we get, goes back and changes something that the former designer/producer just implemented. In most cases it is not an improvement, just different. I guess in the eyes of the new person, it is an improvement.....

First there was anti-macro code with Power hour... then they got rid of PH and added GGS, now there are hints that GGS is getting booted. In all honestly, is GGS better then PH... not really in my mind... I didn't like the 'hour' part of PH because it forced players to train as soon as they logged in.. but as far as skill gains goes, it isn't much different then what we have now. GMing Magery, weapons, and most other skills are just as fast now as before.. Again, a lot of dev time goes into a system that adds no improvement to the game.. and here we go again.

The other big one is SunSwords recent decision to go to more frequent publishes... Which is exactly the way it was around the time of uo:ren.. but then the producer said it was better to have less frequent large publishes becasue QA could focus on one thing at a time...so we tried that for awhile..

The dev team should concentrate more on adding stuff, and less on 'putting their fingerprint' on the game. Don't waste dev time on something with marginal returns..... isn't that one of the things you always say when players offer ideas that you deem don't warrent the dev time?

[SirLynxx]

I only made it half way down this thread befor i had to reply. ill try to finish it after work tho ..
here is my thoughts. I see alot of people talking about how it was harder in the past (way past) to gain skills and get multi Gms. Well is anyone here taking into consideration that there wasnt skill locks?
it wasnt that it was harder to get the skills it was just harder to KEEP the skills! if you dont belive me talk MRTact into setting up a TC without skill or stat locks for a weekend and play with it set yourself with a 7xGM and then go play for a couple hours. Ohh yea you also need to have the code in where you could learn from passing by someone... (I hated bards and Alchies back then!

I Also think that the limits on stats should be removed totaly the time interverls and the limit on how much you can gain.

as for skill gain please remember this is a game and shouldnt be work! it should take some time but not FOREVER to GM a skill i.e Taming and some of the other rough ones.

[Yablonski]

I think it should take a long time to GM any skill. We shouldn't see posts along the lines of "I GMed such and such in 10 hours and here's how you do it".

Make GMing mean something like it used to. People would be more proud of their accomplishments.

Edit: Putting aside the pride thing, it would keep things more challenging for people. What's the point of playing a game if you can have a powerful character in a matter of less than a week?

here we go again

How much should I care about macroing prevention?
You should not.

Should I eliminate 8x8?
Currently some skills are hard enough to raise as it is. 8X8 gives you the feeling that you are acomplishing something and you can see skill gain in progress.

If skill gain were more predictable and sane, would you even need it?
Predictable how ?, I mean if your a tamer and you tame long enough you will get a skill can. You can predict that if i tame for 9 hours i'll get atleast .1 skill gain. But no, if there were a more stable and reasonable method to gaining skill then you wouldn't need 8X8. But as long as some skills are movement based you will require it.

How long should it reasonably take to GM a skill?
Interesting. Taking into account new players/30 day trial players/Vet players I would suggest that the first 2 skills on each of your characters can be GM'ed in 40 hours of active play. After that it should take 1 week of real world time to GM a particular skill. In other words you would have to play UO for a total of 168 Hours using a particular skill in order to GM it.

Should all skills be the same?
Skills that do not use resources to raise should take longer simply because it costs nothing to raise them i.e. Hiding. Skills like taming/magery/etc...should take shorter times to raise as they use skills like healing as well as resources like reagents and armour which costs money to purchase. Also since some skills have jewelery in place to raise you then perhaps those skills should be able to be raised quicker then those skills where you cannot purchase jewelery to raise.

- For difficulty-based skills, what information do you need?
A standard by which a person can raise those skills. If you say that you should fight hapries if your swords is at 60 to gain to 65 then it should get you to 65 according to whatever amount of time you have put in place to gain in that skill. If you say you can tame bulls at 90 to raise your skills in taming to 95 then it should raise you in the amount of time put in place, not by luck or skill gain runs.

If a task isn't hard enough for you, should it tell you that?
I know i use taming alot but it's a good base for me. When you try and tame somthing you have no chance of taming you are told. Likewise when you try perform a task that you will not gain skill in it should say "You have no chance of gaining *insert skill here* from this creature.

I'm thinking about decoupling stat gain completely from skill gain -- so every 15 minutes, you would just gain a stat point, up to your daily limit. Is that a bad idea?
There is no such thing as a bad idea. Just not a well thought out idea. Seriously though i remember that i used to mine and cut wood with my warrior in the early days to get his strength up. In the process of course you would gain in skill. This probably should remain as part of the skill gains and not be seperated. The reason being that if you grant a stat gain every 15 minutes then there is no acomplishment in getting that. You could use that up to 50 for each stat then after that it would change and you wouldn't gain a stat after 15 miuntes once all 3 were over 50. Why don't you seperate the stats into monster groups. If you want to gain strength fight group X. The stronger the monster in group X the faster you will gain strength stat up to your daily limit. If you want to gain INT fight group Y, and so on. This way vet players feel challenged if they want to move some stats around, and younger players still have a chance at fighting the monsters at the low end of that group. It also guarantees reward for the work, the amount is the only thing that changes.

I apologize in advance if i have repeated anyone else's posts....

[DrDolittle]

The phrase Risk Vs Reward got thrown around a lot while debating the felucca changes.

Well I have a new phrase to consider; Work Vs Reward.

A lot of very important elements of UO, like skill gain, and BODs for example, are based on "random chance". Oddly enough there are some fairly trivial elements of UO that are non-random; Fame and karma for reputations, for example; You kill the monster, you get the associated fame/karma. Why shouldn’t skill and BODs work the same way? You do the work, you get the gain/BOD.

If you look at systems that people are upset with, the core problem can usually be traced back to the random chance element in that system. People put in a lot of work but did not "get lucky" and get the expected reward so they are unhappy.

Skill gain, for example, has always been a hot potato. Random chance is not used for skill gain in other games. In most, the work you do goes directly towards an increase in skill.

In my opinion, involving random chance in skill gain is a fundamental design flaw in Ultima Online. The results of this flaw are obvious; Skill gain is something that has been open to abuse, exploit and cheesy tactics since day one. In spite of the tremendous amount of time and effort that OSI has put into maintaining the skill gain code and trying to thwart outright cheaters, they are left with a buggy system which many customers are dissatisfied with. Many elements, like the anti-macro code, added to stop cheaters, hurt the honest player. It is difficult to balance gain rate between the casual and hard core player. Gains are still frustrating and unpredictable. The very fact that OSI added a "guaranteed" gain element is an admission that there is a problem; After all, if the gain system were properly designed one would not get "stuck" and have a need for a guaranteed gain. That the effort poured down the skill gain black hole could have been put to better use improving the game is obvious.

So why was something as important as skill gain management left to random chance in the original game design? Probably because it was easier to code that way. By using random chance to simulate skill gain based on the players work, the designers avoided having to track any "skill credit" values towards an eventual skill gain. Further, there were probably performance issues on the early servers. Random chance likely performed better at that time.

With GGS today, the server must track a value (time of last skill gain) for each character skill and access that value at each skill gain check. So the first hurtle, tracking a per/skill value, has been overcome. The next step would be converting skill gain from a random chance to a use based system.

In a use based system, one would accumulate a lower level "skill-credit" each time one used a skill. Once sufficient skill-credits were available, one would get a gain.

The number of skill-credits required to get a gain at a given skill level could be calculated by a simple formula. For example;

Required_Credits = Current_Skill / Skill_Rate + Skill_Base

Skill_Rate and Skill_Base could be set on a per-skill basis to control how fast one could gain in a given skill.

The skill-credit, given when a skill is used, would be based on the ratio of users skill to the task difficulty. The number of skill-credits. This could also be calculated by a formula like;

Skill_Credit = Minimum( Required_Skill / Current_Skill, Skill_Base * .5 )

This would encourage one to perform tasks near ones skill level but not preclude some gain on harder/easier tasks. A smaller percent of the skill-credit would be granted for a failure.

To balance casual and "hard core" players, the Skill_Rate would gradually decrease as more gains were granted during each day. Thus, the rate at which one gains would gradually decrease as the number of gains grew. The Skill_Rate would be reset to it’s standard value at the beginning of each day. This would allow the casual player to get fairly good gains while allowing the hard core player to continue to gain a reasonable amount without totally abusing the system.

If a system like this were implemented, a lot of buggy code could be eliminated, skill gains would be predictable and manageable, there would be no "instant GMs" and no frustrated casual players.

The same concept could be applied to BODs; You complete a BOD you get some "BOD-credits". Once you have sufficient BOD-credits you could redeem the credits for a better LBOD or a reward.

In the champion spawns one could get "champion-points" for killing the spawn. Then, when the champion is defeated, only those with sufficient champion-points would get a scroll. This would solve the problem of "altar sitters".

Many systems, in a game, should have a strong random chance element. A system that involve directly rewarding a players efforts is not one of those. I believe that it is time that role of random chance as a mechanism for rewarding player effort be eliminated.

[Maledicta]

Mr. Tact:
Thanks for posting this. Here are a few of my opinions:

How much should I care about macroing prevention? Should I eliminate 8x8? If skill gain were more predictable and sane, would you even need it?

What is your objective? To have skill gains mimic real life, or to hold the too-short attention spans of most current players?

8x8 methodologies were adopted because people quickly learned it was the most efficient way to raise skills. But in real life, do you get in a boat and move eight squares to train a skill? Additionally, why would you allow any code in the game that allows programmatic skill gain (ie macros)? Decide what it is you want the game to represent, and adjust accordingly.

How long should it reasonably take to GM a skill? Should all skills be the same?

In real life, if something comes to you easily, does it really mean as much to you as when you have worked really hard to achieve it? If everyone can GM every skill in a few hours, then hasn't UO become nothing but a medieval version of Sims Online? I believe you're worried about retaining the attention spans of most modern players, but at what point do you sell out the soul of the game?

For difficulty-based skills, what information do you need? If a task isn't hard enough for you, should it tell you that?

You know, when I first read this I thought "Great! Now I'll know if I'm wasting my time". But think about it - after getting this information for a little while, people will have the monster levels pretty well figured out. Then, all this information does is point them towards activities focused on skill gain and not playing the game. If your intention is simply to provide a vehicle for people to GM skills, and those skills can be maxed in a few hours, what's the point of the game?

I'm thinking about decoupling stat gain completely from skill gain -- so every 15 minutes, you would just gain a stat point, up to your daily limit. Is that a bad idea?

So, a banksitter would gain as many stats as someone out hunting? I think you'll reconsider this idea.

While we're at it, what's the point of the daily limit, anyway? It sure appears like you've made stat gains too easy, or else this daily limit wouldn't be needed.

The Bottom Line: Why is golf so popular? It's really difficult to be very good at it, yet because any schnook can "play at it", hope to get better, and still enjoy all the associated ambience, it's hotter than Texas asphalt in July. Think about it...

[Bronwyn_of_Baja]

<blockquote><hr>

- How much should I care about macroing prevention? Should I eliminate 8x8? If skill gain were more predictable and sane, would you even need it?

<hr></blockquote>

After nearly 6 yrs of game play, I do not and never have seen the problem with macroing. So long as it is not using any exploits, or anything to harm the game itself, or interfer with another persons game play. Some people I put right into the *tattle tale* category. They cant stand to see someone else do something they dont like. It makes NO differance what so ever to me if my neighbor macros his skills while I go out and work it. To each thier own I say.

8x8 is wonderful! /php-bin/shared/images/icons/smile.gif I use it alot. I am one of those players who hates building chars. If i can hope on a boat and sail for an hour and get some good skill gain, then I can move on to other things. I have a full palatte in game and refuse to use more than 3 or 4 hours at a time working on a skill.

As far as how quickly something GM's..... that ones kinda tuff for me. Every skill seems to take forever for me. Since I dont like to sit and specifically work skills, I get kinda frustrated at the skill gains. I would like to see them a little more predictable. Nothing ticks me off more than deciding to work a skill (above 90) and sit there for 2 hours and get either no gain, or only a measely .1.

<blockquote><hr>

How long should it reasonably take to GM a skill? Should all skills be the same?

<hr></blockquote>

There really shouldnt be a set time limit I dont think. I do however think some skills are rediciously hard to raise. I think all skills should raise at around the same rate. The most frustrating thing is when you get stuck in a skill for 3 or 4 days.

<blockquote><hr>

For difficulty-based skills, what information do you need? If a task isn't hard enough for you, should it tell you that?

<hr></blockquote>

Hmmmmmm......yes and no. I can see where this could get irritating. Esp after you gm a skill. I would get tired of seeing something like (You find this task far to easy) everytime I want to make a skullcap for tailoring for example. Actually, I like the way the crafting skils are set up on the menu. Perhaps for other skills you could create a context menu, similar to the crafting menu. This could give you some very basic info on the task your performing. Then people would have the option to use it or not.

<blockquote><hr>

I'm thinking about decoupling stat gain completely from skill gain -- so every 15 minutes, you would just gain a stat point, up to your daily limit. Is that a bad idea?

<hr></blockquote>

Very bad idea! Wht exactly was wrong with see sawing the skills for stat gain? I have made a few new chars since pub 16, and I havent used one of them because the stat gain is pathetic.

[darth of napa]

my main concern as many others have stated, is that changing your pvp template shouldnt take an insane amount of time. my main pvp char started out as the standard hally mage back befor uo:r and has gone through so many changes....
here are just a few skills this char has had at gm or above: mage swords med eval healin anat wrestling archery tactics hiding parry scribe poisoning(only got to 90's here) resist....

my point here is that changing a char around constantly is a huge pain

my opinion on this is that pvp skills should be much easier to gain. people who are in this game to pvp dont want to spend 40+ hours training a skill, they want to have there char done and ready to go in a week or 2.

here are some skills that i think shoudl be much easier to gain:

resist- many people think this skill isnt that useful anymore, they coudlnt be more wrong, but in any case it took me 4 years to gm this on my main, and its even harder now then it used to be

fighting skills- i started a fencer post pub 16, i never watn to have to do that again, and gettin up to 120 skill is just stuped, expect to have to spend over 100 hours on this, just think at minimum wage, this is like 500+ dollars worth of time

poisoning - not only is this one extreamly slow, its really expensive

basicly i think that you shoudl not have to spend 40+ hours to gm a skill. i understand that skills shouldnt just be handed out, but some of us like to enjoy our time in UO, and spending 2 months training a char isnt all that fun to me

p.s. have fun on your vacation

When I get back from vacation, I plan to start looking into refactoring skill and stat gain. The intent is not to change anything much, but to reorganize the code to ensure that it works the way it is supposed to, and is easier to maintain going forward. I'd like to see some discussion of skill gain issues before then. Some of the questions in my mind right now are things like:

- How much should I care about macroing prevention? Should I eliminate 8x8? If skill gain were more predictable and sane, would you even need it?

- How long should it reasonably take to GM a skill? Should all skills be the same?

- For difficulty-based skills, what information do you need? If a task isn't hard enough for you, should it tell you that?

- I'm thinking about decoupling stat gain completely from skill gain -- so every 15 minutes, you would just gain a stat point, up to your daily limit. Is that a bad idea?

So, stuff like that. Please feel free to discuss amongst yourselves . . .

[Lord Loge]

- How much should I care about macroing prevention? Should I eliminate 8x8? If skill gain were more predictable and sane, would you even need it?

A: 8x8 is the reason why the gain system is predictable to a certain degree nowadays. If you change this and make it predictable in an other way, it does not really change much, does it?
On the other hand, 8x8 is still the only way to GM skills (that work with 8x8) in a reasonable time; if it would be completely removed skill gain would be even more time-consuming than it is now (and this would reduce fun).

- How long should it reasonably take to GM a skill? Should all skills be the same?

A: This should depend upon the skill. But it should be possible faster than nowadays. To GM Taming litteraly consumes months &amp; years (if you don't play uo 6 hours a day or more) and this is out of proportion for a computer game.


- For difficulty-based skills, what information do you need? If a task isn't hard enough for you, should it tell you that?

A: This would be a good idea to make the system more transparent.

- I'm thinking about decoupling stat gain completely from skill gain -- so every 15 minutes, you would just gain a stat point, up to your daily limit. Is that a bad idea?

A: This maybe would not be so good, as you would only have to hang around at Brit Bank f.e. and gain...

[- How much should I care about macroing prevention? Should I eliminate 8x8? If skill gain were more predictable and sane, would you even need it?]

Is macro prevention possible at all? I'd guess no matter how hard you try there will always be someone who finds a way around it.
Eliminating of 8x8 should be done. Right now the problem with gaining skill is that you simply have to be at the right spot to gain skill. If you'd know those spots you could run all over the world trying to gain skill and would only get your GGS gain. Remove that portion of the game and just make sure that no matter where you are you have a fair chance to gain in skill. But keep it movement based for those skill that require movement right now.

As for the rest: i don't really care.

[Salt FoamBreaker]

Should you eliminate 8x8?
You wouldn't eliminate a PvM Spawn would you?

Then why take away my blue spawn?/php-bin/shared/images/icons/wink.gif

Seriously my suggestion is check the individual skills, there are some that raise harder than others, and leave it at that.

[Verund]

- How much should I care about macroing prevention? Should I eliminate 8x8? If skill gain were more predictable and sane, would you even need it?

I think macroing prevention should still be done, perhaps a new sort of protection.


- How long should it reasonably take to GM a skill? Should all skills be the same?

Definetely not. As for example tamers are way more powerfull as GM then warriors, it should take them longer to master the skill. Same for magery, necromancy, chivalry, bardskills...
50-100 hours of real usage should a skill take to get its GM (e.g. 50 for cooking, 60 for swords and 100 for taming). And like now several skills can gain at the same time (e.g. swords, tactics, anatomy, healing).


- For difficulty-based skills, what information do you need? If a task isn't hard enough for you, should it tell you that?

Now way! Everybody should find that out on himself or as many do ask anyone else.
Bringing that in would be like a monster-window for every monster that tells you what specialmoves, spells, valotypeweapons would be used best against it. Please forget about that idea.


- I'm thinking about decoupling stat gain completely from skill gain -- so every 15 minutes, you would just gain a stat point, up to your daily limit. Is that a bad idea?

Well yes and no. For many skills don't seem to increase stats as they should - yes - as for everybody can get his stats with using arms lore, what raises stats sefely - yes -.
I'd like to see fully skillbased statgain again, with that skill for INT, that for DEX and another one for STR and so on. So - no -.
Like the last point of yours, this suggestion of you would make all safer, no more thrill in getting stats, nor more figuring something out on yourself.



Another point on skillgain:
Many people face skillgainstops, with no chance on gaining.
For example many skills stop to gain at 25 (e.g. parry, cartography), okay you can buy the skill on ~30. But other skills stop (again) on 75.
In my case Healing stopped gaining at 80.0. After lots of bandages used I borrowed a ring with healing on it from a friend bringing me to 83 and gained again. Now I gain without the ring again.
Perhaps there are other skillgainstops but I only know this three numbers.
Thats a bug for sure (and I don't really know if it's known or solved in one of the upcoming publishs).

[Renoa Fisherman]

Please take a look at the Poison Skill.

It costs about 1 mil or more to gm this skill in resources. I'm in the low 80's and I gain .3 to .5 points per keg of greater poison. When I get close to 90 ill be lucky to get a .1 per kag.

Any new player would never be able to GM this skill within a year, unless they purchased gold from someone.

[MerlynDavis]

I only play on SP, but please, remove 8x8, pay attention to macroers, bug abusers, etc. I started back when RoT started at 0, and I loved it. I could play the game and gain at a decent rate.

Now I have to bang my head against a brick wall until I hit 70....and even after that, sometimes I have to act "artificially" in order to gain...(for example, stealth at 90+...you can't gain just by stealthing around in leather armor. You have to put on a ringmail tunic or gloves and try stealthing in order to gain)....

Let skills gain with time, like what you propose to do with the stats.

I don't see the difference between a player just standing there and one macroing on a boat. Both will take up server ressources and the one standing still will probably be taking up less. Players who chose to play the game normally would still do that.

Certain skills, should be capped at certain levels. Players would be required to perform quests to break the cap.

For example: At 59.9, swords, tactics would be locked on a warrior. The player would then go to the warrior guildmaster who would give him the task of ridding an area of orcs.

At 79.9 the player would be required to kill the undead in Deceit.

At 99.9 the player would be required to solo a dragon.

The quests would have to be difficult enough to only allow players with enough experience to pass the threshold. They would also ensure that players know how to play their characters. They would also require players to acquire good enough equipment to perform the quests at their lower skill level.

You could have quests that cater to PvP'ers also. Something could be tied to (what was that virtue tied to duels? Honor) so that, to brak their 60 cap, a player must defeat 10 other players that have already broken their 60 cap in a fighting skill. Maybe 50 for the 80 cap, and 100 for the 100.

[Olim]

<blockquote><hr>

What's the point of playing a game if you can have a powerful character in a matter of less than a week?

<hr></blockquote>

The point is you really can't do much with a character unless it has high(ish) skills.

Crafting : Lower-level crafted items are mostly completely pointless. Would you buy or use armour or weapons made by a sub-GM Tailor or Smith? I doubt it.

PvM : Whether done for money or loot, unless you are a GM+ warrior or Mage, forget about it. Who in their right mind wants to fight Earth Elementals for hours on end for such little reward?

Taming/Barding : Again, mostly only useful for PvM, but completely useless against anything bigger than an Earth Elemental now, unles you have close-to-GM skills.

Doom : Don't bother to go there expecting to kill anything other than Vampire Bats and Patchwork Skeletons with any offensive skills less than GM.

Champion Spawns : You can do the first level, or maybe 2 levels in a couple of the spawns if you have a low level character. Try doing level 3 in any spawn (even Rats) with less-than-GM skills. My 3xElder fencer has trouble stying alive.

PvP : I'm a 4 year vet with a multi-115 skilled scribe mage and I can rarely stay alive through a double-hit from a single axer. God forbid any new player who want's to engage in PvP.

My point after all this is that this game is hugely biased now towards players with high skills. I agree with some others here that for a new player starting out from scratch it is probably still exciting and a challenge for the first few weeks or even a couple of months. However, if you start with nothing now (post AoS) it's going to take you a VERY long time to get to a level where you will be able to compete on a level playing field with anyone who was around pre-AoS.

As a few others have mentioned already in this thread, I really don't see any problem with any kind of macroing for monotonous skills. It really doesn't hurt anyone else in the game at all.

Take Poisoning as an extreme example. Use poisoning skill, target potion, target dagger/apple, wait a few seconds, repeat ad nauseum. *yawn*. I would like to give 2 of my characters GM poisoning, but it's so tedious I've given up at around 70 skill on the first one. I haven't even go to the hard bit yet.

Skill gain though 'normal' gameplay? That's all well and good, but it's very very difficult to do anything in the game these days which is worthwhile and will also gain you some skill. Take a Peace Bard as an example. You start with 30 (or maybe 50) skill with a new character. What can you peace successfully, other than using area peace? Probably just overland animal spawn at a guess. If you tried anything more dangerous you would surely be spending more time dieing or running away than anything useful. I couldn't imagine training this without the benefit of a boat and 8x8.

This a game, not work. If it's too much work to raise skills, the enjoyment is gone. Personally, I first played UO just after beta. I think I closed my original account whithin the first month because it was taking hours and hours to do anything with no reward and it just wasn't fun to play.

If you don't start to see decent results from the time you spent in-game within a few weeks, what is there to keep you playing?

[Olim]

<blockquote><hr>

Players would be required to perform quests to break the cap.

<hr></blockquote>

I think the major appeal of UO (to me at least) is the fact that you aren't tied into doing certain things at certain times in order to progress. If you wanted this kind of linear gameplay, play an offline game or something like Diablo II.

If you inforce a quest-based gain system, you completely negate the "freedom-factor". For example, I am currently training a new warrior. At around 65 skill I know I can go fight quite a range of monsters in order to get skill gains. Orcs, Lizard Men, Ogres, Solen, Players etc etc. If when I get to 69.9 skill I have to go kill a certain number of xxx animal, I lose my freedom to do what I like and have to follow the structure of the game

If I wanted to at my 69.9 skill, I could go fight a Dragon to gain. Yes, it would probably end up in me dieing, but at least I have that choice.

<font color=FF3030>- How much should I care about macroing prevention? Should I eliminate 8x8? If skill gain were more predictable and sane, would you even need it?</font color=FF3030>


This question surprised me. All this time I had assumed that if you could do something about the rampant macroing and that silly 8x8 gain system you already would have.
Skills should not be gained by macroing over and over, especially on a boat with "one forward" pretyped. This only has opened the door for unattended macroing (because it is so boring) and illegal programs. If there is a way to make skill gain more, lets say "beneficial" if one does not macro it, why hasn't this already been implemented?

Skill gain shouldn't necessarily be "predictable" but if one is performing a task that is under their skill cap with skill points available one should expect a gain. Sounds contradictory I know. But if there is a way to take out the repitition then I am all for it.
Why on earth would a tailor make 500 oil cloths? After the first 50 I would say he/she is a professional at it.
Same with carpentry for instance. How many staves can one man make? After the first 30 or so he's going to get tired of it, the quality of his work is going to get worse not better.
And what of the Taming skill? How many times does a tamer walk around the forest and tame and release animals before he is "Grandmaster" or "Legendary". Skill gain for taming should come from somewhere else. Right now you have us "promising to take good care of you" only to release and sometimes kill after the "seems to accept you as master" message. How does a tamer use his/her skill? Commanding pets? Pet training? I don't know. But either would be better than the false promises my tamers make to the forest animals.
Skills such as magery and necromancy. Most of us here will agree the easiest way to get to GM+ with these skills is to hop on a boat and one forward for an afternoon. I have to doubt that anyone would say it is fun, but neither is that annoying fizzle sound when you are attempting to cast a spell.
Skills such as tactics and weapon skills make more sense. If one were to practice with his sword often he will become good at weilding it. Skill gain should make sense. Standing on a boat 8x8ing does not make sense.
Removing 8x8 may cause a panic though. There are some people who "love" it and couldn't live without it. Call them skill farmers. The only enjoyment they get out of UO is having the uberest characters the fastest. I hope you realize they are in the minority and go ahead with some changes, including the removal of 8x8 and macroing if at all possible.


<font color=FF3030>- How long should it reasonably take to GM a skill? Should all skills be the same?</font color=FF3030>

First off let me say that all skills should be the same. With the advent of AOS there are no real "uber" skills anymore. All skills have their pluses and minuses. To make one person working tailoring take longer or shorter than some other person working poisoning is unreasonable and unfair. As long as you are working your skill you should gain at the same rate as someone else working a different skill.
As for how long it should take to GM I am undecided. On one hand I would say that 30 days sounds good. Reason I say 30 days is simple. New players get a 30 day free trial. It's more of a marketing move than anything else. Joe Newplayer would enjoy, I think, seeing his skill at grandmaster level and may choose to stay with Ultima Online and grandmaster even more skills. What the average player actually puts into the game in an average 30 days is information I don't have, but I am sure you do. Take that number and work around it. This makes powergamers get their skill the way they want it, but casual gamers can still count on being able to GM in a reasonable amount of time.
Take the GGS timers and throw them in the trash, they are totally unfair to the players who acutally play more than once every 73 hours (or whatever).



<font color=FF3030>- For difficulty-based skills, what information do you need? If a task isn't hard enough for you, should it tell you that?</font color=FF3030>


If it can be done without getting over simplified then yes. Occassionally tamers get the message "that wasn't even challenging" although it is entirely too fast and can be easily missed. To occassionally get the message that something wasn't challenging wouldn't have an adverse effect on game play and may help out some of the newer, or inexperianced players who may need some help learning what to do to get good gains. As others have said, spamming the screen with some sort of annoying message over and over will only help to further alienate players from dev members. If I am at the Nera spawn with my macer I don't want to hear over and over how easy the first level was for me. Yet sometimes I will be on one of my tamers and wonder "Hmmm I wonder if I could gain off that pretame..."



<font color=FF3030>- I'm thinking about decoupling stat gain completely from skill gain -- so every 15 minutes, you would just gain a stat point, up to your daily limit. Is that a bad idea?</font color=FF3030>


I personally don't see it as a bad idea. Then again I never understood why we didn't just get all our stat points to start with. The present stat gain system is really silly. Even while role playing you dont emote *I just gotith stronger by wrestling this bear with my mighty bare arms* No one does that...
Folks just do their best to get their stats up to workable levels as soon as possible.
Stats should be capped out in the character creation screen.
If someone wants to change their stats around after the fact, then yes I would say decoupling stat gain completely from skill gain is a good idea. There is nothing overpowering about something that everyone can do.

Thanks for listening to my opinion.

<blockquote><hr>

- How much should I care about macroing prevention? Should I eliminate 8x8? If skill gain were more predictable and sane, would you even need it?

<hr></blockquote>

People will almost always find a way around it. Remove 'anti-macro' code and use what we had before UO:Renaissance for skillgain. The anti-macro code made certain skills much harder and nearly impossible without setting up massive powergaming sessions, like Snooping for example, which was percieved as an easy skill before anti-macro. Afterwards we had to setup 2 or more characters with about 5 sets of 100 bags with macros tied to snoop them to gain realistically past 80 skill.

As you can see it doesn't matter if one has to move or one can stand in place doing the same thing all day. People will find a way to macro it.

<blockquote><hr>

How long should it reasonably take to GM a skill? Should all skills be the same?

<hr></blockquote>

I would say depends on skill and how powerful it is and the usefulness of it. Again, the speeds we had before UO:Ren would be fine. You could macro all day but it would take you at least a couple days to GM most skills. Some took much longer like Resist, which was very useful at the time compared to now -- Magery was also a very hard skill. Some took shorter, like Snooping which every serious thief GMed ASAP.

I think maybe 20 hours total working many skills would be fine. It's not much different than now for most skills, and infact I can gm some skills faster than that now. I guess you should make some exceptions for some of the more valued skills like Taming &amp; Provocation that you don't really want everyone being able to easily Grandmaster.

<blockquote><hr>

- For difficulty-based skills, what information do you need? If a task isn't hard enough for you, should it tell you that?

<hr></blockquote>

... Yeah, but give an option in the client for it. Onscreen spam could be bad. Think melee skills right now being difficulty based.

<blockquote><hr>

- I'm thinking about decoupling stat gain completely from skill gain -- so every 15 minutes, you would just gain a stat point, up to your daily limit. Is that a bad idea?

<hr></blockquote>

I think.... good idea, now that we have stat locks. It should hush the people who don't know how to work the stat gains right now (which, btw, is better than Pub16. I hated gaining stats with P16).

Oh. If you change only ONE thing... Fix the gaining of the Resisting Spells skill. Right now it's not going very well when one tries to gain it, but I haven't had many problems with any other skills except Stealing above 100, but that's just slow. It DOES gain unlike Resist past 80!

[WarGrind]

Preventing macroing is good, preventing players from training their skills quickly is bad. Reasonably to GM a skill it should take an afternoon from the not real worthwhile skills, to a week or two (at maybe 4 hours a day) for the tough ones. As it is, Magic Resist is unreasonably tough, you can't powergame it without a ton of casters, and they don't cast the 'right' spells often enough anymore.
For difficulty based skills, a good start was having the tool menus explain the success chance, perhaps it could be expanded to other things. It's very tough to understand what to fight when for combat skills anymore, since you can't just gain from anything now.
Stat gain is annoying as it is now, I don't know if people would understand if it was decoupled from skillgain, I think the main thing would to be to fix the skills it doesn't work right for, I'm pretty sure meditation and magery and focus don't raise stats, for instance.

[Woodstock=$=]

Leave 8x8 as it is...

I think a sort of PH should be added in but maybe not as powerful as the old one... Im not sure what the ratio of gain increase for the old one was, perhaps the new could be half of the old? GGS is kind of stupid IMO, its mostly just abused in the form of using it once a day on high level skills that are hard to train. Powerhour acctually gave an incentive to train your chars hard, for an hour.

<blockquote><hr>

All skills should not be the same to GM. Taming should be much harder to GM than melee skills and so forth

<hr></blockquote>

Maybe ya haven't been out much lately but Taming is getting to be low man on the totem pole as far as power is concerned. I don't know why people still think taming is the uber powerful skill it used to be.

I don't want to get in an arguement here, but anyone saying that Taming is still top notch on the totem pole needs to step out of the box for a bit and see what is really going on.

[gandolfofaol]

First off since stats no longer effect skills the gain in stats should no longer be linked to skills. If you do keep it linked check that all skills have that link. Some skills do not cause stats to gain. Also not sure if you are aware of this but the stat gain is not limited to one every 15 minutes. PM me if you need details.

[Socko]

none of that matters when you have a playerbase debating to cancel their accounts. You should be more focused on pvp/thievery changes item system.

[DocMartin]

I hope you enjoy your vacation, and I'm sure this post will have too many threads to read by the time you get back =p
It's already too many for me to read in one sitting.

- How much should I care about macroing prevention? Should I eliminate 8x8? If skill gain were more predictable and sane, would you even need it?
I don't feel that macro prevention is such a huge issue unless people are using the macros unattendedly. 8x8, while being a cheesy way to gain a skill, works quite well. Even with more predictable skill gains, the powergamers would still use 8x8 or similar methods if they could provide faster gains.

- How long should it reasonably take to GM a skill? Should all skills be the same?
Well, with skill gains as they are now, reasonable would be a few hours. With advanced char templates and jewelry, you get almost gm from creation.
Ideally, I would like to see it take 2-3 months of decent playing to achieve GM status. It would make it more of an accomplishment to polish your characters, and it would provide plenty of opportunities to support the lower-skill newbies who need your help. Plus, during that time of building their character, new players would actually experience more of the game and take the time to decide whether they want to be a part of it. (As an incentive to OSI, 3 months of paid game-time. As an incentive to me, I might actually get the free month from them joining and staying)

- For difficulty-based skills, what information do you need? If a task isn't hard enough for you, should it tell you that?
I think they are fine as is, most of them seem to have some kind of built-in thing to tell you if you can do it: Lockpicking, Taming, Smith, Mining, Tailor...

- I'm thinking about decoupling stat gain completely from skill gain -- so every 15 minutes, you would just gain a stat point, up to your daily limit. Is that a bad idea?
Why not just give everyone 225 off the bat when they create a character then?


I read the ideas about having a quest every so often, but that just changes the skill system into leveling (although with AoS, why not? everything else is different).

The most important thing about skill gain is to make it fair and consistent for the casual gamers and the powergamer. Powerhour was nice because it allowed people who may only have an hour a day to play the opportunity to somewhat keep up with everyone else. But gains out of powerhour were slower, meaning the powergamers didn't come out that far ahead. Now with GGS, you could get your 0.1 every day, or you can powergame it. Gains come pretty quick for most skills at any time, but if you can only play for an hour or 2 each day you will be much farther behind the curve.

Not that I think skill-gaining should be a tedious chore of a process, don't get me wrong. And with all the item-based combat going on, it's pretty much a moot point. Anyone can just twink up and become the new uo champion.

[captainnismo]

IMHO, 8x8 is a rediculous 'exploit' and should be eliminated.
Now, as for macro'ing... it's hard because there are so many programs and good script writers that it seems impossible to make any skill totally anti-macro. Nonetheless, I would recommend trying to make the skills 'unattended macro unfriendly', if you know what I mean. Maybe have some sort of max gain per period of time or something.
Personally I feel that if people actually had to train up their characters it would contribute to a stronger community 'spirit'.

Also, I don't think it is necessary for all skills to take the same time to GM. Some skills SHOULD be harder to gain in. For example, I personally feel animal taming should be harder to raise than macing. (as is currently the case)

Lastly, the blatant macro'ing the last couple years has led to a flood of characters, especially mules. No skill should be GM'able through normal play in a day, that's rediculous. Personally, I think skills should take a little bit longer to GM. Like say, a month to GM swords or something, assuming an hour of game play a day.

[Jithero]

Training skills has never been fun for me. I would rather not even think about them and just go ahead and play the acutal game. Unfortunately, there are many game systems that are dependant on having certain high-level skills. I know that some people enjoy treating the skill gain system as if it were some sort of puzzle to be figured out, to be manipulated in an effort to get the most skill the fastest. But I just find it annoying. I would like to see a system where, once you log in and successfully use a skill, that skill will raise at set intervals (say, .1 every 15 minutes) as long as you continue to move around the game world. This would last until you log out or are disconnected. I know this would make it real easy for people to make a macro that keeps their character moving around. So what? I don't really care how someone else got their skills. Manipulation of the system has been going on since the first day the servers came up in 1997. This is supposed to be a GAME, but when it comes to skills it feels more like a chore. I don't think it should take more than about 40-60 hours of game play to get to gm in any skill. And that doesn't mean 40-60 hours of just using that skill over and over. This would go a long ways towards allowing casual gamers to compete.

I like the automatic stat gain idea. I'd eliminate the daily limit if anything.

...

<font color=blue>- How much should I care about macroing prevention? Should I eliminate 8x8? If skill gain were more predictable and sane, would you even need it?</font color=blue>

And replace it with what? Something else that will simply be automated or so random to be useless. I've always liked the idea for cumulative skill/stat loss on catching Unattended Macroers myself... 5% loss per # of times caught.

<font color=blue> - How long should it reasonably take to GM a skill? Should all skills be the same?</font color=blue>

Hard one to answer. No, they shouldn't be the same, plus you have to look at different curves for resource-using skills vs non-resource skills.

<font color=blue> - For difficulty-based skills, what information do you need? If a task isn't hard enough for you, should it tell you that?</font color=blue>

Other than maybe highlighting the success chance (red for too difficult, green for best gain, blue for too easy for example), I see no need for this.

<font color=blue>- I'm thinking about decoupling stat gain completely from skill gain -- so every 15 minutes, you would just gain a stat point, up to your daily limit. Is that a bad idea?</font color=blue>

I disagree with this... keep it tied into skill gain, just remove the daily cap and keep the gains limited to one per hour.

I've said it a hundred times. Anti-macro code is the worst thing ever to happen to UO.

Not being able to gain skills in houses over 70 skill killed many fight club communities that used to exist pre-UOR--people used to have fun practicing together in their houses.

Movement-based anti-macro code made it so we could no longer gain magery just killing stuff in dungeons.

Target-based anti-macro code made it so we could no longer gain skills like poisoning simply by using them in the field.

Needing 100 or 200 different items to work a skill is stupid.

Needing to move 8 steps to have a chance to gain a skill is stupid.

Using 6000 bandages healing a person without gaining once at 94 heal just because you're both stationary is stupid. (When i was helping people gain resist i used 6000 bandages and never gained once--how stupid is that).

Power gamers are always going to defeat anti-macro code with sophisticated illegal programs. Forget about what people do illegally and bring back natural gains to us.

Give us back our communities and team work.

Give us back sparring with each other for gains (give us some practice weapons we can use to train melee skills with friends).

[Peaches]

Yes, I too, miss the sparring with guildmates to work on skills. It was fun and we created many a friendships that way. I know for a fact, that if you bring back inner guild sparring, it will once again, allow PTI to become highly active once again.

[Reachwind]

Skill gain... Ah the wonder and awe of trying to figure out how to gain a skill.

I like the idea of making every skill playable (free skill gain under the current system) or buyable. Stats on the other hand should be done at character creation with changes being difficult and slow (to encourage character deletion and the buying of new skills).

[Johnny Canuck]

For me perosnally, I have always tried to gain through normal game play.

(which is easier to do at higher levels than at lower levels, because you don't really have to think about gains.. as you are busy with other tasks; such as fighting monsters and earning gold)

When I create a new character I tend to rush development as quickly as I can to "get back into the game" Not to the point of being GM, but enough to where I can relax, slow down, and gain through normal gameplay.

I find some skills painfully tedious, (repetitive and mundane) but i'm not sure there is anyway around that. The pay off in the end makes the process worth it.
(though it's killer on the wrists) Some skills need to take longer to GM than others (especially if the reward for doing so is greater- tamers, Bards)

8x8 - If you can find an alternative, then I do not think we would need this method any longer. This is a method used to get a jump on character development. It's easy (though monotonous) and the results are immediate and consistant.

Stat gains - In the world of Britannia, warriors gained strength through sparring and combat; mages gained intelligence by practicing and studying their craft. Which related to the real world. To me this is what gave UO it's charm.

The game has deviated from that path. Which may be fine and all, because I think players are only considering the end result. Maxing them out, and will take it in any form that it comes.

[uohamster]

<blockquote><hr>

- How much should I care about macroing prevention? Should I eliminate 8x8? If skill gain were more predictable and sane, would you even need it?


<hr></blockquote>
OSI/EA needs to put its foot down and begin perma-banning afk macrorers. There are many different types of afk macroers and scripters. They need to be dealt with.
<blockquote><hr>


- How long should it reasonably take to GM a skill? Should all skills be the same?


<hr></blockquote>
The more powerful a skill is the longer it should take to Grandmaster. In my humble opinion, the most difficult skills should take approximately two years (if the player plays 1 hour per day) to Grandmaster. This may seem like a very long time, but the harder a goal is to attain (even if this is just a goal in a computer game) the more it will be cherished when the goal is reached. Some of my most wonderful 'UO moments' are when I gm a skill that was difficult to Gm.
((And skills above gm should be even HARDER to raise))
<blockquote><hr>


- For difficulty-based skills, what information do you need? If a task isn't hard enough for you, should it tell you that?


<hr></blockquote>
If a task is way too easy or too hard it would be nice to get the occasional message to help nudge us in the correct direction as to what to do.
<blockquote><hr>


- I'm thinking about decoupling stat gain completely from skill gain -- so every 15 minutes, you would just gain a stat point, up to your daily limit. Is that a bad idea?


<hr></blockquote>
Even though I LOVE slow skill gain, I HATE slow stat gain. I would like to see the ability for us to easily sculpt our stats. I'm not picky how you do it, I would just like to see us to be able to redo our stats in one hour, not one week.

Thanks for your time.

[Goldenblack]

Dear Mr. Tact:

[I.] Should 8X8 be encouraged by the UO system?

IMO, NO. The UO system should encourage skill gain either (1) through casual play, for casual or new players, or (2) alternately through ATTENDED insane repititiveness, for those who have the stamina to stand around and do such. Casual play should reward players enough that they aren't FORCED to do #2 if they choose not to (thus, I heartily approve of the GGS system), and attended-insane-repitive-task-skill-gain should gain even more than casual play. I don't think that those who have the stamina to stand still and do repetitive tasks with no variety should be penalized--if they choose to bore themselves in that fashion, they should see rewards without having to artificially move around in patterns while they do it, or whatever.
I -do- think that UNATTENDED macroing should still be prevented.

[II] Should skill gain be the same for all skills?

I think skill gain should be scaled according to likely maximum occurence of skill-use. For instance, since a player has to heal often, healing should gain slower than, say, detect hidden, because detect hidden should normally only be used under special, rarer circumstances.

[III] Should difficulty-based skills warn you if its too easy?

Difficulty-based skills should give you a message indicating that you have no chance of gaining if you don't start trying harder stuff.

[IV] Should stats gain automatically, independent of skills?

I think gaining in stats rapidly due to some artificial clock is an extremely bad idea. I think gaining a stat should be an ACCOMPLISHMENT like any other gain, that is based upon productive actions that you take in the game. You should get a small thrill every time you gain a stat, and feel like you EARNED it, not that you were given it by a mickey-mouse stat-gain system. Remember that what makes UO special is -not- its mickey-mouseness.

-Goldenblack

- How much should I care about macroing prevention? Should I eliminate 8x8? If skill gain were more predictable and sane, would you even need it?

Too little too late there.

- How long should it reasonably take to GM a skill? Should all skills be the same?

I think a reasonable time should be about 2-3 months through normal gameplay.

No, some skills should require more time to study. Which ones are up to yourself but the complex skills like Magery, Necromancy, Blacksmithing and other user/resource intensive skills should take more time to GM.

- For difficulty-based skills, what information do you need? If a task isn't hard enough for you, should it tell you that?

No, this would take the fun and exploration out of the skill. You learn a skill by trial and error &amp; that's a good thing. Having a 'one gump tells all' would just make training predicatble and boring.

- I'm thinking about decoupling stat gain completely from skill gain -- so every 15 minutes, you would just gain a stat point, up to your daily limit. Is that a bad idea?

I get a stat point for just standing around? That would just turn the game another notch on the dummy scale. Let people work for their stat pont by training or something. I know their are 7x GM with no skill points left to change their stats but by then those people should know what they want anyway.

[Adrosi939]

"I'm thinking about decoupling stat gain completely from skill gain -- so every 15 minutes, you would just gain a stat point, up to your daily limit. Is that a bad idea? "


Yes and No. I apologize for being indecisive. I say no, because if you keep it at a 10 stat per day cap, wont that just promote and encourage more unattended macroing ? Also, wont it inhibit someone's, who is new to the game, learning and interaction with the world of Ultima ?

I say yes, because if it were structured so that a person were to only get lets say 3-5 stat gains a day....this is would still keep them tied to a develpomental role with their character....and if they ever wanted to macro their stats...well it atleast wouldn't be macroable for an excessive amount of time.



Its a good topic....though

<blockquote><hr>

Because not everyone likes to do quests.... I hate them. They are boring to me..

<hr></blockquote>
More boring than making 15,000 heating stands or oil cloths? More boring than slow forward / stop / slow forward / stop / slow forward / stop ?

[Alec Leonhart]

- How much should I care about macroing prevention? It depends on what your talking about really if you mean unattended macroing I think OSI is doing all that can on that..if you talking about illegal macroing programs I think you should care alot about that..but then again I dont know much about marcoing I just play the game.


Should I eliminate 8x8? Yes if you can find someting to take its place.


If skill gain were more predictable and sane, would you even need it? I think yes but then again thats just me..

- How long should it reasonably take to GM a skill? It think a months time or the over time of 60+ plus hours.

Should all skills be the same? Yes I agree all skills should take about the same time to gm if possible.

- For difficulty-based skills, what information do you need? How to work the skills liek what to fight and when to gain in skill.

If a task isn't hard enough for you, should it tell you that?
Not for sure what you mean by this

- I'm thinking about decoupling stat gain completely from skill gain -- so every 15 minutes, you would just gain a stat point, up to your daily limit. Is that a bad idea? Not for sure what you mean by this either if you mean that someone automatically gains a stat point every 15 mintutes no matter what there doing even just standing there I dont know if thats a good idea. I think the way things are now are okay but it gets kind of tiring at times. But having a stat gain gained a different way could be okay if I knew what you had in mind. Right now I see no problems in the way it is other then I wish it was more then 10 points per day.


















































































































So, stuff like that. Please feel free to discuss amongst yourselves . . .

[GomerOfDoom]

- How much should I care about macroing prevention? Should I eliminate 8x8? If skill gain were more predictable and sane, would you even need it?

a) Macroing prevention. Do what you can, when you can. There are a few very game imbalancing issues (carto/gold, etc), but for the most part, I don't think macroing is THAT big a deal. Make it harder to macro unattended, but don't waste your time trying to completely eliminate it.

Bottom line: make it harder to macro, but don't waste your time on it.

b)8x8. Never 8x8ed... don't own a boat and don't want one. I think its sort of a ridiculous system that has nothing to do with how the game "should" be played (sort of speaking from a roleplaying standpoint here), but I don't think 8x8 should be eliminated entirely. Just nerf it. It's insane that someone can GM a skill using 8x8 in two hours (anat, etc)... make it so you can use 8x8, but make it take a few days (see below) to GM this way. Also, I really liked the idea of making the seas more dangerous for 8x8ers. Introduce storms that sink boats and cause item loss, etc...

Bottom line: nerf 8x8, but don't eliminate it.

- How long should it reasonably take to GM a skill? Should all skills be the same?

a)Time for GM. Well.. if you have an advanced player who wants to gain quickly so they can get a new char back to where their old char might have been, they could use 8x8 to GM a skill in a few days (3-4 days at 3-4ish hours per day?). Through natural gameplay, I think that GMing a single skill should take between 1 and 2 weeks. This seems like a reasonable amount of time for those of us who like to gain through "natural play" (I'm talking 1-2 weeks playing for 2-4ish hours per day). I think these numbers are a pretty good compromise between those who want easier gain and those who want harder.

Bottom line: 8x8 should take a couple days, "natural" gain should take a couple weeks.

b)Skill similarity. No, I don't think skills should be the same. I agree with the group that thinks "standard" combat gains should be easier than "nonstandard" skill gains. It sort of makes sense, right?... realistically, one could train with a sword and shield much more consistently than someone could play music to make two things attack one another. Resource intensive skills seem right on the mark.

Bottom line: no, not all the skills should be the same difficulty to raise.

- For difficulty-based skills, what information do you need? If a task isn't hard enough for you, should it tell you that?

a) Information. Someone else said this (maybe many people said it). Contextual messages (possible to turn off through the options menu) that say things such as: "you easily create an exceptional dagger," or "you just barely manage to fashion a set of plate gloves."

Bottom line: make it possible for players to receive this sort of info in a contextual manner.

- I'm thinking about decoupling stat gain completely from skill gain -- so every 15 minutes, you would just gain a stat point, up to your daily limit. Is that a bad idea?

a) Stat gain. Decoupling is a terrible idea. Stats should be skill dependent to raise and should not be limited per day. They should raise smoothly with skill gain. This includes gain through a *nerfed* 8x8 system.

Bottom line: DO NOT decouple stat gain.

Thanks for your time.

PS (added later by me) Just wanted to say that the skill system as it is now is really pretty good. Improvement can always be made, but right now, things aren't that bad.

-GomerOfDoom

[Donal Mor]

How about fixing skill gains on Siege before jumping ahead to a new agenda.

Donal Mor

[Lady Malynn]

I like the idea of ROT, then forget about policing macroing. I think the GM level should take at least 6 months.

The characters I care about are those I worked hard on GM'ing. I have to admit, I have GM'd a couple of skills by 8x8. But, there is no sense of acheivement in doing that.

Actually, with the new armor and weapon system, characters don't have to have super high skill levels to be successful. So, we can slow gains down and encourage enjoying the journey again.

[leeb1959]

i've always thought that methods like 8x8 a bit silly. gains should occur 'naturally' through use of skills.

getting to GM should take a month or two, playing a couple of hours a day, for any skill. any longer, and it becomes tedious, especially if it's the second or third time around. i like the way that gains are weighted toward the low end of the skill level, but one gain a day is far too few at the high end. perhaps scaling back on the scarcity of high-end gains would be a way to add enthusiasm for the player and shorten the time required to reach GM.

speaking for myself, i can judge which tasks represent a challenge and which do not. i don't want an annoying message to pop up every time my GM scribe makes a recall scroll.

stat gain, like skill gain, should occur naturally through use of skill, but the two don't have to be tied together. adding a seperate check for stat gain to each use of a skill should not be difficult. stat gain should also be unlimited, but weighted toward the lower end of the stat level, much like skill gain. also, there should be no daily limit, but perhaps an hourly limit, on both stats and skills, because some people play incessantly and others play for shorter periods. limiting gains daily seems unfair to those who play for hours on end. a character should be able to reach 100 on a give stat about the same time he reaches 70 in an associated skill. as multiple skills affect each stat, this should occur naturally in most characters if the chance to gain skill and the chance to gain stat were even. for instance, an archer/bowyer might be approaching 70 archery and 30 bowcraft when he reaches 100 dex. there would be no need for him to learn and then unlearn fishing or cooking to build dex. now, here's the rub: this might encourage the old see-saw method of stat gain. my answer for that? include a fair chance of stat loss for losing skill. this would conflict with stat locks, but if losing every 0.1 of stealing might cost a character 1 point of dex, he won't be doing any see-sawing. of course, even a GM bowyer might gain dex when he uses the skill, so lost stats would be relatively easy to recover. perhaps a stat locked at 100 or above could be protected from loss. the idea is to make stat gain 'natural' without inviting the return of the see-saw method, and i believe this would do it.

thanks for the opportunity to express my views. i appreciate the work you and the whole team are doing to keep the game interesting.

At 69.9 skill you could go fight a dragon, but you wouldn't gain any skill from it. With Pub 16, fighting creatures that are too strong for your skill level won't give you any skill gains.

It's really a chore now for new players to find what will alllow them to gain.

I'm not talking about killing 1000's of creatures à la BOD. I'm talking about killing a few creature a bit harder than your skill level. Killing a camp of orcs at 60 swords can be a bit of a challenge.

There could be various quests, if you don't like the one that was give to you, you find another NPC.

Perhaps there could be different levels of difficulty in the quests, and if you complete a more difficult one, your rate of skill gain over time is increased. Do away with the caps and you can use the quests at any time to speed your skill gain along.

[Olim]

<blockquote><hr>

At 69.9 skill you could go fight a dragon, but you wouldn't gain any skill from it.

<hr></blockquote>

That's not true. I specifically used that example because I trained my own new swordsman on a friend's pet dragon only yesterday. From memory, the dragon had something around 81 wrestling, so from my 70 skill start I was gaining very well indeed. I have found training on critters ~5-10 points above my skill level has been best for me. I moved on to ant lions from about 80/81 as they always spawn with 90 wrestling.

My character is a Peace Dexer, so he can keep virtually any animal in the game peaced while he trains with his 150 (modified with items) dex. Fortunately for me I am a long-term vet and know how to 'work the system' for maximum gains. This only comes after many many hours of reading these boards for information....

<blockquote><hr>

How much should I care about macroing prevention? Should I eliminate 8x8? If skill gain were more predictable and sane, would you even need it?

<hr></blockquote>

The way I see it, the more complicated you make macroing prevention, the more people who will download illegal third party programs to circumvent them. I think tying skill gains to the resource grid, which created the 8x8 method, has led to more people getting the scriptable macro programs who would have just been using UOA and a key-repeater or an in-game macro with a pocketknife balanced on the key. Now they have the program, and they apply it to other situations, such as boat mining, the former smelting bug, camping Doom rares unattended and so forth. Since tying gains to the resource grid was meant to decrease unattended macroing, and it hasn't really done so, why not remove it? (Well, there's Salt Foambreaker's need for prey, but that's about it /php-bin/shared/images/icons/biggrin.gif)

<blockquote><hr>

How long should it reasonably take to GM a skill? Should all skills be the same?

<hr></blockquote>

I think it should depend on the skill. There are some skills that just aren't all that useful or desireable. GMing those should take less time. Cooking, Camping, Item ID, and Forensics all kind of fall into that category. There are other skills, such as Blacksmithy, that should continue to take more time and resources to GM, in order that there be some reason for each player to not have their own Smith.

I feel that most combat-type skills have a fairly good gain path as it is. It would be nice if certain portions of the curve were fleshed out with more targets that give gains. I don't know Magery that well, but with weapon skills for example, there's a pretty boring patch from about 60-80 skill where you find yourself fighting the same critters day in and day out to get gains.

<blockquote><hr>

For difficulty-based skills, what information do you need? If a task isn't hard enough for you, should it tell you that?

<hr></blockquote>

This is a bit tricky to code in for all skills, but a cool way to do that would be; If a player has room to gain in a certain skill, and the skill is marked up, and there have been a certain number of uses of that skill that are below the threshold of skill gain, a lil system message will say something like, "This is not challenging for a person with your level of {skill name here}." A preference option to turn these messages off is probably a good idea.

<blockquote><hr>

I'm thinking about decoupling stat gain completely from skill gain -- so every 15 minutes, you would just gain a stat point, up to your daily limit. Is that a bad idea?

<hr></blockquote>

In a way it's a good idea, since it lets people who have their skills how they want them change their stats. It seems like it should be tied to activity in some way though.


The one thing I've always been concerned with is the "piles of spyglassses" problem with crafting skills. Over the years, we have progressed to the point where basically all non-GM crafted equipment is crap. Even if people can use some of it, such as miner/tinkers making their own shovels, that kind of thing won't get anyone all the way to GM. Tailoring and Smithing have it easy with recutting cloth and smelting metal, but it just seems such a waste. I think one possibility would be to use the BOD system, where filling orders gives an extra skill bump aside from making the components. Maybe a normal 10 SBOD gives a certain % chance of gaining 00.1 and filling and exceptional 20 LBOD gives a guaranteed 05.0 or 10.0 gain, something along those lines. Of course, that also encourages the completion of BOD systems for other crafts /php-bin/shared/images/icons/biggrin.gif

[Drake_Brimstone]

- How much should I care about macroing prevention? Should I eliminate 8x8? If skill gain were more predictable and sane, would you even need it?

Depends on the skill IMO. GMing Hiding overnight by macroing it shouldn't be a big deal, it's not going to make the game unfair to others. Macroing Mining on the other hand IS unfair to others as it produces a resource and a source of income where the player doesn't realy have to do anything. I never purposefully use 8x8 myself and think it could be gotten rid if any time without harm if skill gain were more predictable and reasonably fast.


- How long should it reasonably take to GM a skill? Should all skills be the same?

IMO different skills should require different ammounts of time/effort to GM. I also don't think skill gain should depend on RL time, or even entirely played time. I think skill gain should depend on overall effort. Perhaps altering the system for certain skills (like most craft skills) to where you gain skill based on how long you pratice the skill and how much resources you put into it. Complementry skills should allow faster skill gain. (For example High mining should allow faster skill gain for Blacksmithing, Lumberjacking would increase skill gain for Carpentry and Bowcraft/Fletching.)


- For difficulty-based skills, what information do you need? If a task isn't hard enough for you, should it tell you that?

Yes, PLEASE tell us when what we are making isn't hard enough for us to gain skill. However, I know this could get annoying when making something exceptionaly easy that we actualy need to make for some reason (BOD?) so allow us to turn off the message if we want.


- I'm thinking about decoupling stat gain completely from skill gain -- so every 15 minutes, you would just gain a stat point, up to your daily limit. Is that a bad idea?

I like this idea, though I'm unsure about the 15 minutes and daily limmits. For one thing I havn't gained more then 1 stat point in a single day in a VERY long time.


Drake Brimstone - IA - LS

[Marquino]

This is my two bits worth. I have come back to play UO and it has changed drastically. I played this game for 2 years right at the beginning and into T2A. During that time I managed to GM two of my characters in one skill each. All this was accomplished through playing the game as it was meant to be, no macroing or whatever 8X8 is, just killing stuff and crafting. The reason why I left is the reason I came back, housing. Based on the information I read on AOS, there would be a major influx of housing space, etc, etc. Well to my dismay, it is basically the same as it was, no space and also the fact that one can GM characters relatively quickly, money is easy to come by thus making it easier to GM more characters and so on. I myself, find it very boring and tedious to sit there and craft the same thing over and over again just to gain skill, it was my second reason for leaving UO as well (spent more time filling vendors and orders, then doing something fun). I do like the new stuff added to the game (resists, magic enhancements, characters) and hopefully I will be able to get a decent house at some point. Anyway on to the questions Mr. Tact has laid upon us. /php-bin/shared/images/icons/smile.gif


- How much should I care about macroing prevention? Should I eliminate 8x8? If skill gain were more predictable and sane, would you even need it?
As many other people have mentioned in this thread, it doesn't really matter what you do, there will always be a way to do this, legally or not. Since I do not know what 8X8 is (maybe someone will enlighten me), I cannot comment on that. I think skill gain should be as it was in the beginning, slow, for some skills, anyway.

- How long should it reasonably take to GM a skill? Should all skills be the same?
It should really depend on play time as well as what you are doing to gain in that skill. All of them should be the same yes.

- For difficulty-based skills, what information do you need? If a task isn't hard enough for you, should it tell you that?
None and no. Part of the fun, and mind you this is a role playing game, in real life a little voice would not be telling you that you can't tame that deer.

- I'm thinking about decoupling stat gain completely from skill gain -- so every 15 minutes, you would just gain a stat point, up to your daily limit. Is that a bad idea? Yes, I agree with all that agree, it is a bad idea, again takes the suspense out of not knowing. Predictability precedes boredom.

Marq

[SirLynxx]

i am Telling you "Back in the Day" you could Gm almost anything in a week or 2 if you tried and yes i am a 6 year vet. Getting Gm in a skill wasnt the trick, it was keeping it! If you Gmed Swords (always a 1-2 day trick from day one) then went to get the last 10-50 points in Tact you would loose Gm in Swords.

Here is my challenge to any 5 to Almost 6 year vets out there .. really think back .. back to befor anyone had towers and all ... was it really that hard to GM something? NO i say it was just next to impossible to keep it more then a day or so if you want to bank your gold!

[douglatz]

On Macroing prevention I don't particularly care one way or the other about macros - but I feel pretty strongly about unattended macroing. What I think would be cool would be after you have been working on a skill for a while - gained a certain number of potential skill gains within a defined period - something happens.

A good example of this type of thing would be fishers - they always have to worry about a serpent coming up. Adding things like this for the other skills would be cool too - for example, an alchemist has been grinding away for an hour and has either gained .5 skill or would have gained if his skill cap were higher/skill unlocked/etc... then a potential mishap occurs - something like he has overdosed on the nightshade and needs to take a cure potion to reset it, if he doesn't he becomes poisoned. Or he has knocked a couple of potions together and has a 5 count to run away before the explosion/poison gas cloud/etc... For a Tailor, they cut themselves and are taking bleeding damage. A mage miscasts and recalls someplace random. Any number of things that wouldn't really matter if the player was there, but could be potentially hazardous to a non-participating macroer. Perhaps skill loss instead of gain? Just an idea.

On GMing I think you have a good start in that the skills are already pretty much broken into levels (neophyte, novice, apprentice, journeyman, expert, adept, master, grandmaster, elder, legendary). I think that advancement should be very quick through to the apprentice level, fairly quick through journeyman, become difficult at expert and adept, slow at master and glacial at grandmaster and above. To be honest - I think you should reconsider about bringing back the powerhour, with advancement above the GM level only possible during powerhour.

On information Yes - definitely there should be more information available in-game. It's silly that i have to come to stratics to find out what I need to be attacking in order to progress in a skill. Some of us just don't figure these things out on the Test Shard.

But you have an answer - all the books that get passed out as treasure. Fill 'em up with tidbits and in-game stories. I know that players are writing them up (as am I). For critical information, put it in the libraries - give players a reason be be in reading the books! Another avenue would be to put mages, fighters and the like in the guildhalls and bars and give them a context menu - the fighter will look at you (maybe spar with you for a minute) and then tell you one or two creatures that you should go fight. (Or the mage will have you cast a few spells, then tell you what circle you should be working in to improve). There are lots of ways that you can work it into the 'storyline' of the world, without just giving the information away (or keeping it 'secret').

Decoupling Stat Gain from Skill Gain - I think this would be a mistake. As players we have to make choices on the skills we use in order to gain in stats - heck, I have an archer who is working with fencing weapons right now, just to get Dex up! /php-bin/shared/images/icons/smile.gif

Douglas
(Talisman/Sonoma)

[Xanthio]

<blockquote><hr>

When I get back from vacation, I plan to start looking into refactoring skill and stat gain. The intent is not to change anything much, but to reorganize the code to ensure that it works the way it is supposed to, and is easier to maintain going forward. I'd like to see some discussion of skill gain issues before then.

<hr></blockquote>

When I saw this post mentioned on the Stratics main page ... thought to myself "uhg ... I would so hate to have to read that thread". And in fact, I haven't. I honestly don't want to know what the players want ... fortunately for me I don't have to. /php-bin/shared/images/icons/smile.gif

Why don't I? Because as my Gov 101 prof used to say "The masses are asses". I can already picture all the posts this thread will get ... I've heard it all before. People who think things are too easy ... people who think they're too hard. People will demand everyone "wants something for nothing" and that we shouldn't have to work to build characters ... others will complain that min-maxer types, powergamers, are cheaters and it should all be about the numbers coming naturally.

So what am I getting at? It's not their decision ... nor should it ever be. It's not our game, and I'm not going to sit here and whine that my $9.95 a month entitles me to make design decisions. Do I have ideas? Sure. Suggestions? Many. Do I want the dev team to imbibe and consider them? Sure. Do I feel it's some kind of ethical responsibility that you listen to me because I am the player and I demand you do such and such with my game. Never. It's not my game, its your game. It's the designer's game. It's not the player's game. It shouldn't be the player's game. Ever. Good games aren't made by asking people what they want ... good games are made by creative people having their own vision and if the players don't like it then they can go play something else. Good way to run a business no ... good way to make a game fun yes.

Not, as I said, that you can't listen to player input ... I would hate to have anyone imply that I think the devs should remain distant from the players. I just think that now and then you best not forget that its your job to know better than the players.

Lets break down the key points you brought up ...

<blockquote><hr>

- How much should I care about macroing prevention? Should I eliminate 8x8? If skill gain were more predictable and sane, would you even need it?

<hr></blockquote>

This is a tough question to answer because it gets to the heart of the skill system as it stands now really ... but if I were to take your question a piece at a time I'd start with macroing prevention. Should you care? Absolutely. To everyone who just cried about wanting something for nothing ... here's a heads up I don't care. I'm sorry but the idea of making a game that you don't actually have to you know ... play ... is just absurd. The question is if macroing prevention is actually viable in it's current form I think.

I see no reason to remove 8x8 ... unless you want to actually put in a managable system that can appeal to "casual" skill gain players and your powergame base equally that doesn't involve the current anti-macro code but rather approaches the situation in a different way. The biggest argument against 8x8 is that it's extremely hard for a lot of people to grasp ... and unfortunately that includes 90% or more of the people who use it. They couldn't tell their head from their arse but hey they downloaded a script that can so why do they need to?

I've always been the type of player to powergame the numbers ... as I've said before it's just in some players' nature. If I started a new paper and dice RPG with some friends the first thing I'd do is crack the book open and digest the numbers ... it's the way I play games. It's not a computer game thing, it's not a UO thing, it's a game thing ... some people play that way some people don't care and just jump in. Something that's actually bothered me for years now is that since the advent of the programs people exploit constantly with now, everyone thinks they're a powergamer. Some idiot downloads a script to max out his skills and he thinks he's hot stuff even though he has no idea what he just did. Years ago "playing hard" meant you know ... actually ... playing. Hard.

The problem is I don't know the answer as to how to make this better ... if you remove macro prevention entirely you will just see an explosion of even easier exploitation of the skill system. If you don't ... well, is the status-quo really that great? There are skills now that the antimacro system cripples for people who want to powergame them ... such as magic resistance. I think that part of the solution ultimately lay in the Guaranteed Gain System which turned out to be a hideous joke. It's been dubbed "GGS - Guaranteed Gain ... Sometimes" by friends of mine. When the longest times were 4 hours and little nuances and caveats hadn't snuck in whereby you might just not get a GGS at all ... then it was a good idea. Now it's the bastard child of a good idea and a bad idea.

<blockquote><hr>

- How long should it reasonably take to GM a skill? Should all skills be the same?

<hr></blockquote>

I think that the answer to your first question is tied to your second question ... to which I would say NO. That should be a no-brainer ... skills are not the same they should not gain the same or be equally as challenging.

I think the best way to think this through would be to break down skills into categories ... which would have fundamental assumptions made about their difficulty. Warrior skills, sorcery skills, Rogue skills, Crafting skills ... etc. Each should have their own assumed difficulty.

When I say this in regards to how "long" it should take to GM ... my answer mind you is not the same you're probaby getting from everyone else. No doubt most people are screaming that either they want Test Center code or they think you should have to play for five years to GM a skill. I would say to you that one of the merits of UO that has maintained my interest is that it has always reflected effort. Well, until certain illegal third party utilities came about anyway. How long it takes to GM should reflect how badly you want it. The timeframe you should most worry about is how long it would take a casual player doing casual things. A few weeks to a month for warrior skills maybe ... similar for wizardry, longer for crafting ... etc.

<blockquote><hr>

- For difficulty-based skills, what information do you need? If a task isn't hard enough for you, should it tell you that?

<hr></blockquote>

I think that if most skills had some kind of in-game guide the way crafting does with tools, that would resolve this question. I see no reason that giving people information up front they're going to find out easily anyway is an aversion to immersive gameplay. The stuff you don't want to give away up front is the big "wow" info ... can I cast X spell is really not that big of a "wow".

<blockquote><hr>

- I'm thinking about decoupling stat gain completely from skill gain -- so every 15 minutes, you would just gain a stat point, up to your daily limit. Is that a bad idea?

<hr></blockquote>

Well, yes. Again, what you're really doing is decoupling character advancement from concious effort on the part of the player ... which is what has always made UO cool. I have to concur with some players though that there's issues with stat gains now ... some skills just aren't giving any at all.

In conclusion do I have all of (or ... you know ... any of) the answers? No. Do I believe there are some fundamentals that should be adhered to, whatever solutions you may design? Absolutely. Freebees are terrible ... be it macroing or a system that just "gives" you skill for no effort. Effort should always be rewarded ... "time to GM" should always be relative to the effort the player is willing to expend. Current antimacro tends to break down and with existing exploits can be too easily circumvented ... new ideas are necesary. There's nothing wrong with 8x8, but if rendered obsolete by new and better skill systems, then there's nothing wrong with that either.

-X

[aitrusdni]

- How much should I care about macroing prevention? Should I eliminate 8x8? If skill gain were more predictable and sane, would you even need it?

<font color=000080>I don't have a clue what 8x8 is, so I can't comment. As for macros: Any kind of macroing that makes a task more convenient should be allowed; but macroing is currently used by a few to gain an unfair advantage over the majority, which is wrong. This ought to be countered somehow.</font color=000080>

- How long should it reasonably take to GM a skill? Should all skills be the same?

<font color=000080>No, all skills should not be the same. But I also don't think that any skill should take less than a week to GM. In fact, I'm of the opinion that it should be a long, difficult process to GM a skill. Repetitive and low-usefulness skills (like mining, parry, resist) ought to take between a week and a month; more "exciting" skills and combat skills (including taming) ought to take a month to a year.</font color=000080>

- For difficulty-based skills, what information do you need? If a task isn't hard enough for you, should it tell you that?

<font color=000080>Perhaps there should be some sort of optional assessment feature which tells you something like "It looks like it would be almost too easy to tame that creature." It shouldn't give me that information unless I request it however; chances are I already know its going to be easy to tame a cat, and I probably don't expect to gain any skill for it.</font color=000080>

- I'm thinking about decoupling stat gain completely from skill gain -- so every 15 minutes, you would just gain a stat point, up to your daily limit. Is that a bad idea?

<font color=000080>Probably one of the worst ideas yet. Frankly, I am very annoyed that you guys removed skill-stat relevance. I could theoretically mine for 10 hours straight and gain 40 points in intelligence. This seems very ridiculous to me. I prefer some semblance of realism. I think stats ought to be tied to specific skills again like they were before; but maybe there could be a weighted chance to gain in other stats as well.

For instance, if I am mining, and I gain a stat point, I would have a 60% chance of gaining in strength, a 30% chance of gaining in dex, and a 10% chance of gaining in intelligence. That way I don't feel like I'm being patronized and rewarded with a random stat point just for playing the stinkin game. I also agree with someone who mentioned that stat gain ought to be possible for doing a task, not necessarily for gaining in it. If I'm 7xGM but need to boost my strength, I should be able to go mine and gain strength, without fiddling with skill distribution.

But the idea of giving me a random stat point every 15 minutes just for BEING in the game is utterly ludicrous. Anyone who's lazy enough to want a random stat point just for managing to breathe deserves to never accomplish anything.</font color=000080>

OK, I'll recap:
<font color=000080>1) Macroing for convenience, good. Macroing for the advantage, bad.
2) Lame and repetitive skills should take a week to a month to GM. Favorite skills should take a month to a year.
3) Only tell me how hard a task will be if I ask.
4) Tie stat gain to specific skills again, with weighted chances to gain, and link stat gain to tasks not skill gain.
</font color=000080>

[boo_star]

<blockquote><hr>

- How much should I care about macroing prevention? Should I eliminate 8x8? If skill gain were more predictable and sane, would you even need it?

<hr></blockquote>

Eliminate 8x8. But not because it's an easy system. Eliminate it because the current systems are ridiculous. GGS was a good system, then it jumped from 4hrs per GGS gain to near 24 hrs per GGS gain. A better system would be RoT with PH (up to 70 its PH, after that RoT) or the original version of GGS (maximum 4hrs between gains near GM)

<blockquote><hr>

How long should it reasonably take to GM a skill? Should all skills be the same?

<hr></blockquote>

If all skills earn as much money as each other then they should take the same time to GM. As is was pre pub16 (and possibly post) they were not equal and as such the skill gain should reflect that. If you fix the skills so they are as they were in the past, keep skill gain as it was.

<blockquote><hr>

For difficulty-based skills, what information do you need? If a task isn't hard enough for you, should it tell you that?

<hr></blockquote>

Most skills do, no need to change that.

<blockquote><hr>

I'm thinking about decoupling stat gain completely from skill gain -- so every 15 minutes, you would just gain a stat point, up to your daily limit. Is that a bad idea?

<hr></blockquote>

Yes, its a bad idea. Bring back the old system.

[Tendrimede]

So basically, UO is now runned by people who post on stratics board?

[Seraphima]

As a "casual player" I have been very grateful for GGS. However, something is not working correctly with skill gain for certain skills and/or I am not understanding GGS. I am having immense trouble, which many other players have confirmed, with the parry skill. My advanced char, who had a moderate level of parry skill prior to the AoS launch, is not having trouble getting reasonable gains, even thought she is is now in the 90s. My newer char, who had no parry prior to AoS (and now has 26.6 to be exact) is not gaining through normal gameplay, nor is she getting the GGS gains that are due according the the timetable. She is playing both with a shield and without, and although I see the "flash" that tells me she is parrying successfully, she is not gaining anything at all. I have been fighting everything from bunnies to ettins to solen infiltrators. All of the methods I have been advised to try by other players have not worked for me. For example, today I fought 4-5 bunnies and birds at once without a single gain (about a half hour of rt play) and I also fought solen infiltrators without a gain (about an hour of rt play).

Now, that having been a specific case, I would say generally that it would help me to know if something I'm fighting is TOO HARD for me to gain in a difficulty based skill. My understanding is that currently, if a skill is difficulty based and you fight something *either too hard or too easy*, you won't get a gain. I feel that if I can see myself succeeding at fighting something that is very hard for me, I should gain skill. If I choose to fight difficult monsters and thus succeed less frequently, I shouldn't be penalized for that. I shouldn't be forced to fight just a certain few things at a certain skill level. BUT, if this is the way the game is going to stay, then I would like to know if something is being considered "too hard". It is fairly easy to figure out if something is too easy, but not always so easy to figure out if it is too hard.

I expect it to take quite some time for me to GM a skill, but I shouldn't be going days without a gain at the 25ish skill level!

[TyCon]

<blockquote><hr>

How much should I care about Macroing Prevention?

<hr></blockquote>
Pretty gawd dang much -- think it through… macroing is normally done on a skill that is BORING to raise (i.e. Fishing, Anatomy, Magery) or feels like it takes too long to raise. Do something to make the skill gains at least FEEL quicker and then maybe you’ll see the WANT/NEED to macro go away (a least a little) but you can never really remove the threat of Macroing.
I mean look at fishing: The whole fun in the skill is having a Grand Master that can fish up MiBs, the fun isn’t in raising the bloody skill -- in fact raising the skill is like pulling teeth and feels like a huge waste of time. Standing around clicking water isn’t many peoples idea of good time but fishing up a DSS and battling it for a MiB, now THAT’S fun!
<blockquote><hr>

Should I eliminate 8x8? If skill gain were more predictable and sane, would you even need it?

<hr></blockquote>
Go for it! Make skill gains quick, fun, and non-painful! Think of the future of MMORPGs, you have two great MMORPGs coming out within the next few months that are claiming to do away with the hair pulling grind of older MMORPGs (i.e. UO &amp; EQ -- but mainly EQ). And yes gaining skills in UO can be considered Hair pulling depending on what you are doing (Blacksmithing, Fishing, Magery, Tailoring) and how many hours you play -- casual gamers suffer because it takes longer to reach some of the main content. The future of MMORPGs isn’t mindless ‘leveling’ (that’s all EQ and the old UO ever was) it’s going to be about CONTENT (Using your skill, Places to travel, things to see, things to collecting, things to loot, &amp; feats to perform).
<blockquote><hr>

How long should it reasonably take to GM a skill? Should all skills be the same?

<hr></blockquote>
Depends really on what you the Developers think is more important… is it A) Players spending time gaining skills (a grind that might rub some the wrong way) at any cost (i.e. Macroing, or soloing) or B) Players enjoying the Game Content… I’d say B and a lot of the content isn’t unlocked until you Grand master the said skill, which by the way can take an enormously long time depending on how long you play (like Blacksmithing, Tailoring, Lock picking or fishing). ‘Leveling’ is an outdated concept of game play but should at least have a minor role within the game.


Let’s look at fishing again as an example (and this IS only an example). Let’s not kid ourselves… the fishing skill isn’t very useful until level 100, only thing you can do before then is open a shoe store and serve fish steak dinners to your patrons. Now, Let’s say I only play one hour a day on this character (which as about right for a casual gamer) and at the rate of his skill gain it takes two months to GM the skill… I’ve just spent that amount of time riding around in a boat – TWO MONTHS of doing nothing but staring at water – It has taken me TWO MONTHS just to get to the fun part of my MAIN skill I bet many people would tire of the game before they even got to the content of that skill.

I’d say quickly mastering the skill and putting it to use matters more than the many countless hours spent trying to raise it to THAT level – a minimum of one month (which IS the amount of time many upcoming MMORPGs are going to use because it better serves the Casual gamers a few ‘hardcore’ ‘classes’ will take many, many more months to finish).
<blockquote><hr>

For difficulty-based skills, what information do you need? If a task isn't hard enough for you, should it tell you that?

<hr></blockquote>
Be straight forward… if I can’t create something or I can’t perform a feat I should know. This information would be wonderful to prevent wasting of a player’s resources &amp; time (time is a MAJOR factor to a lot of people and so is wasting resources they’ve spent hours to collect). If something is too easy, I should know for sure in order to prevent more waste of our time.
<blockquote><hr>

I'm thinking about decoupling stat gain completely from skill gain -- so every 15 minutes, you would just gain a stat point, up to your daily limit. Is that a bad idea?

<hr></blockquote>
The system does need a change and this change would seem fair if it applies to EACH stat (every 15 minutes Strength, Dexterity, AND Intelligence goes up).

[Sularis]

It seems like one thing that I see alot is "The worst thing OSI ever did to UO was _______ __ _____"

I personally think that theres MANY things that have really made me stop playing UO lately. The latest of course being AoS and all the 'baggage' (buggage?) it brought with it. UO USED to be a very fun game, and its NOT by a long shot because the game itself was awesome, it was because the game was at least fun, but most importanly it was a community game that allowed a group of friends to enjoy time together, whether they were a 'good' honorabe guild training, or a pack of reds marauding the Felucca lanscape.

All of that seems to be gone now, at least it is for me and the people I have played with for the last (almost) 4 years. Skill gains were (IMHO) perfect just after pub 16 right after 'powerhour' went away. In fact, despite some of the negatives that came with pub 16, in MANY ways, it was for myself, and many others, the way UO should have been from the start. The only thing I would have changed with skill and stat gain in pub 16 is the increase in stat gains per day that is currently in effect.

Enter Pub 17 - aka Age of Shadows....

I used to have 4 very active accts for myself and my family, now they dont get even 2 hours of play a week between the 4. Two of them are closed already and the others will likely follow soon for at least a few months, perhaps indefinitely. We, and so many others have no desire to play this item based game that we used to love. Its just so sad to see something we have spent so much time enjoying suddenly be turned into what it has become since Feb 11th.

Get rid of the Advanced Character service, bring back the rares market, make the game FUN again like it used to be. Most importantly, STOP BRINGING OUT 'UPGRADES' AND CHARGING PEOPLE FOR THE OPPORTUNITY TO DEAL WITH A MULTITUDE OF BUGS AND CHANGES TO THE GAME THAT THEY DIDNT WANT UNLESS YOU FIX THE THINGS THAT ARE CURRENTLY BROKEN, AND IMPLEMENT THE THINGS WE HAVE BEEN PROMISED FOR YEARS.. SHEESH!!

Sularis

[DerekL]

<blockquote><hr>

1. There are to many "gold sinks" now.....
2. I have played three years and I cant even afford PS's., and I for one am tired of all the "gold sinks" in this game now.....armor, regs, wpns, jewelry, and item insurance, etc., etc. bah!

<hr></blockquote>You confuse 'gold sinks', which remove gold from the game, with transfers of gold between characters.

[TyCon]

<blockquote><hr>

AND IMPLEMENT THE THINGS WE HAVE BEEN PROMISED FOR YEARS.. SHEESH!!

<hr></blockquote>

Like Necro spells &amp; More housing space? /php-bin/shared/images/icons/doh.gif

[Laozar Firewyth]

<blockquote><hr>


How much should I care about macroing prevention? Should I eliminate 8x8? If skill gain were more predictable and sane, would you even need it?


<hr></blockquote>

Macroing prevention should be a moderate concern *IF* you intend to readjust skill gain in such a way that certain skills aren't almost completely impossible to GM without macroing.

I think 8x8 should be eliminated, but some MAJOR reworking of "normal game play" skill gain for a lot of skills needs to be done first.
For instance, magery is extremely easy to GM with 8x8, but takes a grossly disproportionate amount of time and effort to GM if you do not 8x8. This goes for some other skills as well, and should be addressed. I would much rather see it so that normal gameplay skill gains are accelerated and 8x8 eliminated. The net effect should be it will take longer to GM skills like magery with 8x8 now(since you cannot 8x8), but it would take much less time to GM than it does without 8x8 now. Magery isn't the only skill affected by this though.

I think that also addresses the question of if skill gain were more sane would we need 8x8 :-)

<blockquote><hr>


How long should it reasonably take to GM a skill? Should all skills be the same?


<hr></blockquote>

How long should it reasonably take? That's a loaded question my friend :-)
On one hand, it should be a long process to GM, since you don't want overnight fully developed characters. On the other hand, it shouldn't take very long, because we already have such a large base of developed characters that new players or characters will feel very frustrated at having to take a long time before they are able to be on a par level and competitive with others. The upside of making the time to GM shorter is that it also diminishes the gap that very rapidly develops between casual players and powergamers.

Should all skills take the same time? Ideally yes. I've thought about this for a very long time, and I used to think they shouldn't, but the more I think about it, the more I realize that how do you then determine which skills should take longer and which should take less? How do you determine how long each one should take, how far apart they are, etc? Everyone is going to have a different opinion of which skills are more useful or more powerful or how long they should take to GM, so the obvious answer would be to not spend the huge amount of time trying to make those determinations and just make them all take the same amount of time.

<blockquote><hr>


For difficulty-based skills, what information do you need? If a task isn't hard enough for you, should it tell you that?


<hr></blockquote>
Preferrably more than we get now :-)
Yes, if the person is less than GM, there should be a message telling them if what they're doing is not hard enough to give them any chance at skill gain. However, ideally there would be a way to turn this on or off for those who don't want the "fun" spoiled for them.

<blockquote><hr>


I'm thinking about decoupling stat gain completely from skill gain -- so every 15 minutes, you would just gain a stat point, up to your daily limit. Is that a bad idea?


<hr></blockquote>
I don't personally see it as a bad idea. I don't see any reason why this would have a negative impact on the game.


Basically right now the system is set up in such a way that (other than warrior skills), if you attempt to gain through just "normal game play", you'll be waiting a very long time to GM, but if you 8x8 or macro, you'll GM in an extremely short time.

The problem with this is it "forces" people to macro or 8x8 (at least in their perception, or if they want to get to a competitive level and be able to do a lot of things)... now, both 8x8ing and macroing are very boring, which ends up with people having a tendency to unattended macro, which can get them in trouble.

So 8x8 and macroing should be effectively eliminated (although, macroing can never be totally eliminated without some EXTREMELY intrusive restrictions which affect people who don't macro, and that would be VERY BAD) and normal gameplay gains sped up a bit to make the only path to GMing a median length instead of the extremely long length (without macro/8x8) or extremely short length (with macro/8x8) that it is now.

Also, PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE pay attention to certain skills that are extremely difficult to GM regardless of whether you macro or not!!!!!

Carpentry is by and far the most time consuming and expensive skill to GM out of the crafting skills. Tinkering, tailoring, and smithing are much much easier.

Lockpicking. OMFG. Just do us a favor and go try to GM a lockpicker from scratch... you'll see what I mean.

Magic resist. Wow. Even before AoS, unless you had several people helping you macro by summoning demons and having them all cast on you, this was probably one of the hardest skills in the game to GM, and now with only a small handful of spells that check it and allow you even a chance at skill gain... come on, are you guys into torturing us? :-)

That's all I can think of right now.

[EliteXGamer]

First let me start by saying, I know this is not exactly what your looking for but.... I think first and foremost my stats should raise. For some odd reason my stats will not gain. I'm not going into to much detail cause I've told to many GMs and such this story, but I've GMed music and raised other skills into the 70s and 80s and my stats are still at character generation stats. So My advice is to fix whatever is causing this first and foremost.

Also letting players know when there skill needs to target something more powerful to gain, or what not, would be great. I mean maybe an option in the options menu to enable it or something like that.

Hell with it hers a quick ideas list...

You could mess with macroing for better or worse but remember even though its a MMORPG a lot of people don't RP. With the way you have skills done if you want to be a "bad ass" character (RPing or not) you have to power game sometime or another.

Some skills should be harder to raise than others because some skills are comparatively weak (pathetic) compared to others.

Oh yeah Game time should not matter in skill and stat gain. So please don't do anything that says you have to be so old to gain so far in a skill/stat and fix it if you have (hint, hint). Yet saying you have to do something so many times is OK. hehe

ummm....

How about taking out some of the now useless and unrewarding skills (I don't feel like naming the ones I think, cause it will only bring contempt). I'm sure this may hurt and probably will make some people mad but for the majority there a waste of space and coding. Add some other stuff in or make the useless and unrewarding useful and rewarding.

Yes, Skill gain and stat should be UN-grouped and only because of the way its set up now. I could be wrong here but by gaining in strength when you do something that does not require it is ludicrous. If it was me I would take it back to the old way. Or even better add stuff to the game that allows you to specifically gain in stats and not skills. Like lifting weights, carrying logs, running (with weights on your arms instead of bracelets) could be strength. Intelligence raises could be from playing checkers and chess (would promote playing with others), reading/writing books, figuring out puzzles. Ways to raise your dexterity could be, dart boards, looms, spinning wheels, etc. I think this would add more use to existing items in the game and would add more interaction between players if well thought out. The reason I think this is better is yeah you could raise intelligence from magery or strength from swordsmanship, or dexterity from music but really you are learning the skills and not the stat. Football players work out to be stronger and more athletic not practice tackling other people to be stronger.......... I don't feel like giving any more examples. Heh

hmmmmmmmm.....

That's all I can think of.

So if anyone would like a rebuttal or want to say "good ideas" just reply to this message cause I'll probably never read all the new post unless there sent to my email. hehe

PS I know i cant type well. certain fingers are faster than the others. hehe

[Zardo Zap]

My goodness,

I had been reading the thread trying to work out my thoughts - and you have got the problem exactly.

Its the inherent randomness in the system that causes the problems, the "skill walls", the frustration. GGS is a patch to the randomness (if you are really unlucky here is a point anyway) and 8x8 removes some of the randomness (but destroys any illusion that you are in a real game world).

But accumulating skill points by each successful challenging use of the skill and gaining when you have accumulated enough removes the randomness. (Well of course the skill use would be random e.g. does the spell fizzle?, but the gain wouldn't be random.)

Reducing the points gained over the course of a day also makes sense.

So what about the situation where a mage sits and just casts spells (original reason anti-macro was introduced and which lead to 8x8). Well there are a number of options:

1) Let them sit there - IRL (for a mage - I know /php-bin/shared/images/icons/wink.gif ) a mage would often sit in their tower to practice. This would encourage unattended marcroing and with new lower reg suits doesnt use up resources. Hmm should mages be easier to "make" than warriors. Probably not.

or

2) Make them go out and about - they have to use their magery in risky situations. So the gain only comes when they cause damage to a creature or overcome a creatures resist. Hmm lots of problems here - trapped creatures, guildmates etc. How much of a concern here - not sure. But probably better than allowing them just to sit and cast (or as it is now sail and cast).

I favour (2).

Now to get back to the questions and apply your solution.

Should 8x8 be eliminated

It should. Its artificial. It destroys the game world illusion. Yes I have used it because its there. But we shouldn't need this artificial game device.

Should all skills be as difficult as each other to gain

I don't think is necessary or achievable. But no major skill should be simple to obtain (e.g. peacemake or magery).

How long to gm

My opinion is it should be easy to get a skill up to a useable/fun level, but if you want to GM it it would take a long time.

I know UO is not a level based system (thank heavens), but the instant GM mob are like - *I want a level 50 now!* - hey I have a level 50 Magic User - I should be able to make a level 50 *insert new class here* in about two days.

UO is a skills based system (sure fudged now with AOS) but still a skills based system. Just because you don't want to work your character doesn't mean you get skills straight away.

Veteran players have enough resource advantages to ease the process. Goodness when I started my smith/miner I was soo pleased when I could afford a pack horse as I then I could really accelerate my business! Now I have all the ingots I need so when I want a new smith I just have to get working. There is nothing wrong with this (although I don't really like being able to buy 999 iron ingots - it was a lot better when you had to find the miners - I digress).

If you can get skills up to a reasonable level quickly, jewellery will allow vets to get them up to a good level quickly. Then they can work their character to remove their jewellery dependance (so they can wear some other adavantage giving rings etc).

Should I discourage macroing

Well do you mean mindless (and hence unattended) macroing. Yes get rid of anything that will encourage that.

Lets look at some examples.

Taming is very hard to macro now. Sure there are taming scripts but its hard. This is a great example of what you should have to do. It would be better if it were a little less tedious - so potentially gaining out of using your pets would be good. But it works.

Combat skills now work. No more finding a rc and hitting it till you are GM. No 8x8 equivalent. Sure you can train up against a guild mate providing you gain at the same rate. Sure it can be scripted. But just now it works.

Provo worked better when you needed fresh targets.

Smithing and tailoring I think is fine just now. With the new menus - you dont really need macros. UOAssist is good for smelting, but they use resources. The things you have to do to gain are logical. It would be better if the random element were removed. Sure you can script them (you cant gain unattended from any legal program). The only way I can see the unattended smith scripter being limited is to limit the gains in a day. I don't know if this is a good solution.

Magery/Necro/Chivalry/Peace - 8x8 just makes them a joke. GM is a few days of boat sailing. Really. That can't be right. Make them all target based or something that needs real targets - like causing damage or overcoming resists (Chiv might be difficult)

Lore/Vetting/Sprit Speak/Healing - again 8x8 makes them a joke. But difficult to target base them (Esp as you can only lore your own pets until GM!). I am sure there is a solution. Its less critical with those though.

Summary

If you possibly can remove the random element.

Remove aritificial elements if you can (eg 8x8)

Don't introduce anything which will encourage mindless unattended marcoing. Make top skills (or combat skills eg magery, fighting, taming etc) target based to gain skill points.

Ensure trade skills use resources. Possibly limit daily gains at top end to limit attraction of scripting.

If you do make any changes - please test them for quite a long time /php-bin/shared/images/icons/wink.gif

Zardo

I don't think you should change anything.
If I remeber correctly, Power Hour was put in to stop all the macroing. Back before Power Hour that was the only way to really gain. Now power hour is gone again, but with 8x8 you can build skills to gm within days.
This game was made to play. Kinda hard to play a char that is stuck at 50 skill because they need to fight a certain type of creature to gain...
Weapon skills are a perfect example. What ever happened to gaining skill off player vs player? I used to love helping out my guild mates, and chatting and hanging out, and having a good time. Recently (before aos) I dropped gm swords on my 7x gm warrior to gm fencing. That took forever. I am at 113 now. Thank god for the pre aos rotting corpses in ilsh, and the shrine that USED to cure you.
But the things I had to fight on my way up was a joke to say the least. What is the sence of having to fight wolfs? or bears? Can't you see that is a joke?

I vote for leaving the system alone. Unless you are going to allow players to gain skill by fighting another player with higher skills.

No more nerfs please.

You also might want to look into fixing all the bugs that are in the game now before you go and code in a bunch of new ones with a skill gain change.

[Grace RH]

Just one thing that has bothered me since warrior skills became difficulty based.

I think that instead of having to kill monsters at your skill level, you should have
to use a weapon at your skill level. Sort of like a mage has to cast a spell at their skill level.

For instance, lets look at a butcher knife for a swords warrior as the equivelant of fireball for a mage. Does not matter what you hit with that butcher knife you should be able to gain up to say 50 (like fireball for a mage).

Then it just progresses from there accordingly, like from 50-60 you would use a katana, 60-70 a longsword, 70-80 a viking sword, 80-90 any axe, 90-120 a polearm.

It just seems to me that with this difficulty based method for warriors is really going to turn off new players. I am making one paladin and hating every damn minute of training her. Why after 2 1/2 years of playing warriors I have to now suddenly fight stuff I would never have bothered with before to gain? hello, just how many days do you think a person can stand hitting skeletons?? Only to then get the thrill of hitting what, trolls or harpies for days on end?

I don't care if I don't gm swords for 6 months, but I would like to be able to hit whatever I feel like and still have a chance to gain.

Thanks for listening.

[Zilor]

How much should I care about macroing prevention? Should I eliminate 8x8? If skill gain were more predictable and sane, would you even need it?

8x8 should be removed, if you add more senseible skill gain, then thats just a bonus on top. I am of the thought that all cheap (easy, overly fast, not as intended) ways to gain skills should be removed, 8x8 being one such way, should be removed.

- How long should it reasonably take to GM a skill? Should all skills be the same?

No skill should take any more then 3 months of average play (3 hours a day maybe) and at the fastest a month... I'm not sure how that works out making any sense...

Skills should be scaled by difficulty and usefulness, with something like cooking taking very little time but taming or barding taking the maximum amount of time.

- For difficulty-based skills, what information do you need? If a task isn't hard enough for you, should it tell you that?

Once it becomes stupid to continue trying to gain on something you should get a message tellign you of the futility of it.

- I'm thinking about decoupling stat gain completely from skill gain -- so every 15 minutes, you would just gain a stat point, up to your daily limit. Is that a bad idea?

Thats a good idea, perhaps just let them build up in a pool and then let them be used as wished.

Yes, I see what you mean about the gold sink.
To me its a gold sink though when all my gold goes for PS to rez skills, and save my armor with item insurance (gold sink). And considering they just reduced all the loot on creatures, (which was a huge gold sink) and I still cant afford PS, because its hard to save the gold, to rez the skills on my char to reach maximum potential, I still dont want to have to pay for any more skills.
In essence your still paying for skill gain. Its bad enough I am trying to save the gold for the damn PS, and can't, without paying for something else to gain skills, like the 7500 it costs me everytime one of my character dies, trying to hunt to get the gold for the PS and item insurance and regs, and try to save some, etc,etc.

I am tired of paying to gain skills (PSs), and regs and potions to gain skills, and items, and item insurance and not being able to get the gold for anything else in the game.../php-bin/shared/images/icons/crazy.gif I would really like to have a house in Malas someday, but at this rate forget that, and I have been playing for years....../php-bin/shared/images/icons/frown.gif

Having to pay for more skills only hurts the poorer player, and that gold sink wont hurt the rich player as they are already making alot of gold.... and they will be the only ones that can afford to pay for more skills, not the poorer player and especially not the newer player.....

[LadyCam]

My apologies for the long winded post, but you gave us lots to comment on /php-bin/shared/images/icons/smile.gif

<blockquote><hr>

How much should I care about macroing prevention? Should I eliminate 8x8? If skill gain were more predictable and sane, would you even need it?

<hr></blockquote>
First, when you say "macroing prevention" are you referring to unattended macroing? If so, I don't think you should be all that consumed by unattended macroers considering there isn't much left in the game for a low skilled character to do except maybe tram brit cemetary... If they can get their skills up fast it makes the character more fun to play sooner. That character can then participate in group hunts and not just be a pain to everyone else who has to keep resurrecting the low skilled player. When someone macros unattended or uses a script for skill gain they aren't really hurting anyone else, the only ones who may take a negative effect from it is whoever gets paid when someone buys a pre made character. If they're macroing unattended or using a script to expliot the game (for example: this said by Basil in a previous post "...if someone is using a carto script 24/7 and making millions of gp a day...") then that should be punishable and if possible, stopped.
If you're referring to just simple macros like ones that can be created in uoassist or even in game then I don't think you need to be concerned with these either. Some activities are just way to monotonus. Like smelting a whole backpack full of plate gorgets when training blacksmithy, or cutting up a whole backpack full of oil cloths when training tailoring.
As for my thoughts on 8x8, I think it should stay in the game if the skill system stays the way it is. It gives people an option as to whether they want to gain quickly or to gain the old fashioned way. I've been playing for 3 years and I've done characters both ways. When I first started I did 8x8 a lot so that I could have my characters able to make money quicker, so I could get established. Now that I am well established, on my new account with AoS I've been doing my characters the old fashioned way because its more challenging. I think its nice to have more than one way to do things, and more interesting.
If skill gain was more predictable, of course you wouldn't need 8x8 but I think it would take away a great deal from the game. Gaining in skill whether it be 8x8 or not is a major part of this game. You can only go killing stuff for so long before you get bored. Thats why I keep playing this game, theres many different things to do and many different ways to do them.
<blockquote><hr>

How long should it reasonably take to GM a skill? Should all skills be the same?

<hr></blockquote>I think that skills like Animal Taming and Provocation and Peacemaking should take a long time to gain in. They are seriously powerful skills. The amount of time it takes to gain skills right now is right on I think. Of course I wish it didn't take so long to gain in Taming, for example, just because I want to be Legendary like NOW! /php-bin/shared/images/icons/laugh.gif but, once you reach high levels you can make serious cash, so its fair for it to take a long time. Just like in real life if you wanted to become a doctor, you have to go through years of schooling, but once your finished you have the ability to make a lot more money than everyone else.
<blockquote><hr>

- For difficulty-based skills, what information do you need? If a task isn't hard enough for you, should it tell you that?

<hr></blockquote>It would really be nice if it would tell us that a task wasn't hard enough. Personally, I would love that. Also though, it should be something that could be toggled on and off. If I'm going to take my bard out and train I'd want it on. But, if I'm going to take my bard out and go dungeon crawling I don't want the message popping up all the time, even if its on the bottom of the screen. Usually those types of messages get in the way of party chat also.
<blockquote><hr>

I'm thinking about decoupling stat gain completely from skill gain -- so every 15 minutes, you would just gain a stat point, up to your daily limit. Is that a bad idea?

<hr></blockquote> All I can really say about that is; for example, I've been training blacksmithy and tailoring on a new character for about 2 weeks. I've gotten both skills up to around the 90's and my characters stats are completely done already with 125 str, 50 dex, 50 int. That happened REALLY fast. But, on another new character, which is a necromancer made by the predetermined template, her stats aren't doing much at all. So considering that, I guess it would be best to make stat gain completely separate from skill gain. But, if you want to make it happen automatically, wouldn't it just be easier to have us be able to set our stats like we would on a test shard?

/php-bin/shared/images/icons/members/bounce.gif
I would love to see the skills and stat gains go back to the way it was before rel 16. What was wrong with working on your stats the way it was done. It was a lot more fun and even new players could rez their stats and skills.......and get rid of those PSs or at least make them available as loot, (high end ones more rare) on all aggressive creatures so everyone has a chance to get scrolls even the newer player.....

Osi keeps trying to re-invent the wheel. They change something and it doesnt work and they dont put it back to the way it did work. They keep jury-rigging to make the skills and stats gains back the way they were before rel 16. It was easier and more fun then and everyone could do it....veteran and new player alike.....

[Tyro]

I don't mind if the 8x8 system is altered to a new random n x n system. Skills need to normalize so that some of the harder skills will be easier and some of the quick skills need to be a bit harder. Magic resistance skill need to be more consistent in term of gaining. Right now at high level, the only way to gain consistently is GGS. Also, special moves need to normalize too.

For every update you people've done with skills it gets easier and easier to GM a skill (for good and bad).

I really just have some input on this one;
The 8x8 thingie should be removed.
The only real thing it does is making people hop on boats saying "one forward" eight times after every skill gain then uses the skill again... *rince - repeat till naucea preferably with a macro*
Then again, will the removal of 8x8 mean that every skill will be GM-able by standing on one spot?

You said: "so every 15 minutes, you would just gain a stat point, up to your daily limit. Is that a bad idea?"
Actually, yes. Why just not give us the 225 pts right away? ... Seriously, to gain in stats you really need to do something. Usage of some skill should be mandatory.


Just one more thing: Please, do -not- make it too easy. Don't spam us with "The creation of that item will not let you gain in skill!" when we're making our trinkets or "The animal you are trying to tame is easily tamed and you will not gain skill".
*shudders* ... Do NOT give us too much served, it just takes the fun out of things.

[imported_Samwise]

How much should I care about macroing prevention?
It would be great if you could allow attended macroing and prevent unattended macroing but I think it would take too much effort to do that. I guess we have to leave it up to GMs to differentiate.

Should I eliminate 8x8?
No. Not unless you make skill gains a bit easier, more regular and less location dependant.

If skill gain were more predictable and sane, would you even need it?
Probably not.

How long should it reasonably take to GM a skill?
25 hours of play time for easier skills. 60 hours of play time for tougher ones.

Should all skills be the same?

No. Make taming, lockpicking and poisoning a little easier. Make taming aggressives a lot more effective in getting skill gains. Make players decode more maps to GM cart. GGS makes it way too easy now.

For difficulty-based skills, what information do you need?
maybe use colors to indicate how your action would affect the skill in use. For example 96 tamer:
taming a dog gets red text meaning no gain possible
taming a great hart gets yellow text meaning a little chance of gain
taming a ridgeback gets green text meaning optimum chace of skill gain
taming a nightmare gets orange text as you are probably wasting your time.
etc.

If a task isn't hard enough for you, should it tell you that?
It would be nice if this could be set as an option for each skill or maybe just those set to rise.

I'm thinking about decoupling stat gain completely from skill gain -- so every 15 minutes, you would just gain a stat point, up to your daily limit. Is that a bad idea?

No, leave it but make see-sawing work again.

[Lameski]

- How much should I care about macroing prevention? Should I eliminate 8x8? If skill gain were more predictable and sane, would you even need it?
You should eliminate 8x8 and skill gaining on boat except for fishing related skill. Make those skill a little easier to gain thru ame play.

- How long should it reasonably take to GM a skill? Should all skills be the same?

Powerful skill like Magery, Provocation, taming should taken a little longer time to achieve. All skills above 100 should increase certain amount of difficulty.

- For difficulty-based skills, what information do you need? If a task isn't hard enough for you, should it tell you that?
Put it in option up to player to config whether they need?

- I'm thinking about decoupling stat gain completely from skill gain -- so every 15 minutes, you would just gain a stat point, up to your daily limit. Is that a bad idea?
stat gain in every 15 minutes not a bad idea but daily limit.

[DHH]

In regards to Macro Prevention, let's face it everything OSI has ever done for "Macro Prevention" has hurt the game in one form or another and now almost encourages a system of gameplay that favors Macroing becuase most "Macro Prevention" techniques have made it far more complicated and difficult for the average player to make it. There are many skills that are almost impossible to GM by simply playing the game, which makes the idea of getting rid of 8x8 a very, very scary thought to me. Sure, 8x8 may not be realistic but it works and in some cases it is the only way to get adaquate gains in some skills. By getting rid of 8x8 without spending 100's of hours of development time adaquately fixing the skill gain system is going to ruin the game and upset many players. Let's face the fact that Macroing is going to take place and without an almost total re-write of fundamental game systems any attempt to hinder Macroers is going to negatively affect average players and is going to waste vast amounts of development time that should be spent fixing bugs that really need to be fixing. Most of the "Macro Prevention" techniques implemented in the past have already negatively affected many players and should have never been implemented in the first place. My best suggestion is too forget about Macroers and focus on game issues and changes that can actually benefit the game instead of further hurting the game. It's plain and simply a waste of development time and budget trying to fight macroers so just forget it. Far too much time has already been spent fighting the minority of the player base (macroers, exploiters) let's focus on issues that affect the majority of the player base instead.

GGS at it's core wasn't a bad idea but it has some fundamental flaws. In essence it is the best system implemented to attempt a skill gain system that was predictable and sane, it's helps break the notorious skill blocks of the past and circumvents the negative issues of Power Hour, such as it only helped people one hour a day. At high skill levels it is an almost fruitless system, 24+ hour waits between GGS gains is totally absurd. Lower the GGS rate at High Levels and stop tieing skill gain to total skill points that too is totally absurd. Every skill should be independent. Fix the system so that ALL skills work with it. The pains people are having with skills like Parry are well documented, fix that. UO has been pleagued with half-implemented buggy systems that hurt the game as a whole, if the development team continues to break working code making changes they are only going to succeed at ruining the game. FIX WHAT IS ALREADY HERE FIRST!!!!!!!!!!

Other changes to make skill gain more accessible to average players. Difficulty based skills though realistic don't totally make sense. For instance my Tamer uses Magery primarily and almost totally for healing purposes. In an average 2-hour play session she casts about 30-50 Greater Heals, 10 Cures, 4 Gates or Recalls, and 1 or 2 Resurrections. In her case in an average 2 hour period of average fun playing she has 4-6 chances to get a Magery gain (she is about 83 Magery now) which isn't adaquate for any amount of significant skill gain. It could be argued that she does need GM Magery to adaquately function as a Tamer but that does not mean that I don't want her to have GM Magery and I believe that this is something that should be fixed.

Let's get something straight, UO is a game that favors GM characters, it is that simple. Newb characters are all but useless in Brittania. The idea of 100 hours to GM a single skill is absurd, let's look at this rationally we don't get paid to play UO, UO is supposed to be a FUN GAME not a full-time job. I don't pay someone else to allow me to work a full-time job. I shouldn't have to spend 3 months of my time just so that I have a character in a game that I can actually play with a minute chance of success. Plain and simply UO is not fun until you reach high-skill levels and after the first few skills character building gets overly boring and tedius. The aristocratic ideas of elite veteren players that newbs should have no choice but to be worthless for years on end is stupid and in the end will ruin the game. UO needs new blood to continue and months of remedial labor with little to no fun is not the way to win over an already dwindling new player base. With the many great MMORPG's coming out in the near future OSI needs to concentrate on keeping a happy and growing player base. No skill should take more then 3 months of average play, with skills like Taming and Provoke being on the more lengthly scale, and most skills should only require 10-20 hours of hard work. A 2x GM Fighter (Tactics/Weapon, with 70-80ish Anat, Healing, Parry, LJ depending on the template being trained) shouldn't require more then a week of average play time, face it Fighters suck when even a 5x GM Fighter can barely solo a Deamon without dying. Why the heck should I spend 500 hours to make a 5x GM Fighter just to attempt to solo a Daemon??? Give me a break. Change Fighting Skill Gain to the way it was pre-AoS for god sake. To the Vets out there, take pride in the fact that you GMed in "harder" times and enjoyed the evolution of a new world but remember that times change. Newbs do not have an even playing field now, a newb Smith can't make a living, no one is going to buy a smithed item from a newb smith when they can get a similar but exceptionally well made GM version of the item for similar price made by a veteren GM+ Smith. Despite being an MMORPG, many UO players do not adaquately role play, and for any newb player to have a chance at feeling like he is making an accomplishment and his playing time being worthwhile he needs to have a mentor. UO is well suited, being skill based, and has a great potential for Master/Apprentice type Role Playing, but it needs to be remembered that every Master's true desire is to see there student (Apprentice) succeed and often even become better then there Master. This means in game terms that Apprentice's (or Newbs in general) should be able to gain skills faster then there Master's (Veteren players) did when they started. This is the standard evolution of things, every generation (referring to real life now) learns faster then there parents did. UO should not be expected to be different. I am not saying that there should not be a reward for working your characters or even a sense of pride related to GMing a skill, finally GMing a character is a great accomplishment for any player, but excessively long training times is just absurd. My best suggestion is to award Master/Apprentice Role Playing to add depth to the game while making UO more newb friendly as well as rewarding veteren/experienced players for helping the younger UO community, tweak GGS for more adaquate gains over shorter periods of time, get rid of "Macro Prevention" systems that hinder skill gain for average players, tweak certain skills to be more accessible (Parry, Taming, Poisoning, Magic Resist, etc...)!

UO is essentially a community based game, the game itself should not hand lead newbs all the way, keep difficulty based skills as they are and emphesize Master/Apprentice Role Playing as discussed earlier.

Regarding Stat Gain, coupling Stats (and Stat gain) to certain skills made perfect sense and added depth to the game. It made sense that a character studing the arcane arts of the wizard would increase his intelligence, or a character that mines everyday for rare ores would gain in strength, while a warrior honing his skills with a shield might gain in dexterity; that added depth and immersion to the game world that was lost with the Pub. 16 Stat Changes. Sure you crippled "See-Sawers" but at what price? You crippled an aspect of the game that added a distinct sense of depth to the entire game world? My suggestion dump the Pub. 16 Stat gain changes and make Stats related to certain skills like they used to be.

To re-cap:
1) Ignore Macroers, don't waste your time... "Macro Prevention" has historically hurt average players more then the Macroers ever did to begin with and the Macroers just adapt to the changes made. Get rid of "Macro Prevention" systems that already hinder game play.
2) 10-20 hours of hard work to GM most skills, at most 100 hours of hard work for *HARD* skills. Tweak GGS for more gains over shorter periods of time and make GGS independent of total skill, each skill should be seperate, make really rough skills more accessible (Parry, Taming, Magic Resist, Poisoning)
3) Master/Apprentice Role Playing should be encouraged by the community and through game mechanics. This would solve many problems and would greatly increase the level of enjoyment of newb players and most likely Vet players too.
4) Recouple Stats to Skills like they were pre-Pub. 16, it added depth to the game.

In general concentrate on fixing and tweaking the game systems already in place, don't break working ones or add bugs by adding new ones.

[Blue Fin]

I just wish you would fix GGS, I worked VERY hard to get to 114.1 taming (+20 scroll). Then you released AOS, and since it has gone live on my shard, I have had TWO gains.
My other tamer bought a +10 scroll and slipped on a +11 taming ring, he can tame just as much as my elder tamer (easier since he has peace in his template).
PLEASE FIX THIS!

[steffrupp]

Just a short calculation - 3 hours a day for 3 months adds up to 270 hours of play time only to GM one skill - thats way to much!!! It should not take more than 100 hours to GM a skill.

[Inspiration]

- How much should I care about macroing prevention? Should I eliminate 8x8? If skill gain were more predictable and sane, would you even need it?

Macro programs have been in use for years. As someone said, too little too late. Theres no way you are going to prevent say, someone setting a macro program to double click a dummy every 3 seconds.

- How long should it reasonably take to GM a skill? Should all skills be the same?

I used to play 4 years ago. Back then, being a GM was pretty damn rare. It was seen as a major accomplishment to GM any skill. As an example, me and my group of 3 friends played UO for 2 years and I don't think any of us ever hit 100.0. I may be wrong, but back then it was seen as a major task. Frankly, it bothers me that someone can make a new character, transfer 1 million gold or whatever, and then GM a skill in a couple of days, if that. How long should it take to GM a skill? A month minimum perhaps? I dunno... maybe I'm being too critical, but I always thought getting to the maximum in any skill was something people had to work for a long time on. Cramming it all into a few days just doesn't seem right. Yes, you put in hours and hours of work, but I also think you should have to experience "game world time" too. Maybe I'm just bias because I've never been a GM. *shrug* I just always used to think being a multi GM was worth something.

- For difficulty-based skills, what information do you need? If a task isn't hard enough for you, should it tell you that?

Yeah I think a little message might be nice, something like "You fail to find this challenging" just to indicate that the skill requires something more difficult perhaps to increase gain. I don't know.. the moment you start to spoon feed people.. the game gets a little less rewarding.

- I'm thinking about decoupling stat gain completely from skill gain -- so every 15 minutes, you would just gain a stat point, up to your daily limit. Is that a bad idea?

You might aswell do that now because that's what you have alreaddy!! . If you log into UO, lock INT and DEX, run to a dummy room and strike a dummy once, you get +1 STR. Return 15-30 minutes later, hit the dummy once more, +1 STR. Repeat and gain at least 11 points, versus a gain of say, 2.5 on wrestling or whatever weapon you used. Lock STR and DEX and you gain INT in the same way. Again, DEX too. I feel sorry when I see newbies hitting a dummy furiously for hours and only gaining say, 6 STR, when in reality they only needed to hit that dummy 10 times and run around for the rest of the time, and they would have gained twice as many points. That's just wrong. I feel like saying "Hey dude, don't do that, it's a waste of time and skill points". Back in 98 the dummy rooms used to be full! Now I rarely see anyone in them.. hmm.. I wonder why *rolls eyes*. When I came back to this game I wasted three characters because I thought you had to beat a dummy and really work your ass off to gain STR points on every new character. How wrong I was. I now have more STR points even tho I have less skill points on my STR releated skills. As its been said before, STR gain etc should be on a curve with skill gain. Decide which skills influence STR. Average those skills, and this average directly effects your STR. This makes sense.

I dunno.. personally, I prefered it when you really had to second guess this game. When you wasn't sure what the mechanics were and when you had to really share your knowledge with people and try new things. Right now, everyone seems to know exactly what you need to do to advance quickly and smoothly. UO should never be allowed to turn into an instant-bad-ass-character game.

Heres one for you... has anyone ever looked into implimenting "Character Age".. a system where by a character gains "age" over time, and the older it gets, the more STR, DEX, INT it can gain and the more skills it can advance in. So a player who has played a character for say, a year, will feel like they have, and be able to look at their stats and see a year old character. A year in real life could be say, 25 years UO time. So a player who has been working on his mage for 3 years can open the paper doll and see a 75 year old character. Of course I'm not talking about altering the paperdoll, but just another stat that actually says *something* about how long someone has been working on that character. So someone can pop open the paper doll, see "75 years" and think "wow, that guy is someone to ask about how to do this, or that" esspecially for newbies. Character age would of course advance while the player is logged out, it would simply be a "DATE_NOW - DATE_CREATED" calculation then multiply that against an UO Years system.

But then perhaps people will get bored.. and I guess for Origin it's important that doesn't happen.

Just my 2c.

[beatleman327]

As far as i can see we need to keep one thing in mind....this is a game and it should be FUN, taking FOREVER to create a char that can survive an ettin attack is not my idea of FUN. Its seem that lately that is the case, with that in mind if you were a new player the game would become very frustrating and boring in a short period of time. Now i know alot of people are going to say "well new players will just have to deal with it or don't play etc etc" but we all need to remember that people leave the game every day for one reason or another and if the game is to much of a pain in the arse for new players to get started then eventually OSI will be left with so few players that theres no other option but to shut the game down. i for one don't want to see that happen. In the last year/year and a half a great deal has been done to try to eliminate powergaming. Everytime we find some way to gain skills at a reasonable rate you guys find a way to stop it. Now you mention putting a stop to 8x8ing. Why do you always seem to want to make the game difficult to get a decent char started? ITS A GAME AND IT SHOULD BE FUN!!! real life is a pain in the arse A GAME SHOULD NOT BE!!! My god 8x8ing is no walk in the park...its the most boring way i can imagine to gain skills but the final reward at the end makes it worth it. Besides 8x8 only works if your there to steer your boat off other boats and objects. To just set a char to 8x8 and walk away will do little for gains as you'll eventually hit something and then your gains will stop. So unattended macroing is not a real problem associated with 8x8ing. Gaining magery and eval during normal game play is a pain in the rear. The only real way to make a decent mage that can kill more then a mongbat in a reasonable length of time is to 8x8 or spend hours killing mongbats with fireballs. If i were a new player i'd get disgusted pretty quick with the game if i had to spend days killing mongbats while many of the people i were meeting were going off to kill things much more interesting and challenging. At least when you could seesaw skills to raise stats you were then able to SURVIVE while working skills during normal game play and seesawing skills to gain stats was as boring as hell too but atleast when you were done you were able to survive working skills through normal game play. Now not only can't you seesaw to gain stats but skill gains are based on difficulty. So how is a new player supposed to know what he/she should be doing/fighting to gain? Unless he/she uses trial and error and dies alot, losing items repeatedly which they can't afford to begin with little lone with the lowered loot on the lame enemies they might be able to kill. Why does everything have to be difficult? Why should it be so hard to create a decent char? It's a game and creating a char thats strong enough to have some fun with in a reasonable amount of time should be acceptable. After all aren't games meant to be fun? not a TASK one must struggle over for days/weeks to be able to one day possibly enjoy....assuming you don't get frustrated and just say the heck with it and move on. Granted things shouldn't be so easy that theres no challenge either but in my opinion the game was reasonably well balanced prior to pub 16. After that things became so complex that it bred macroers just to create a viable char in a reasonable length of time. OMG LOOK AT THE TIME!!! gotta go i have to work in the morning....thats another point....some of us don't have all day to work a char through normal game play. The only way we can create a decent char in a reasonable length of time is to powergame. Anyway thats my 2 cents. I'll try to post more specific ideas and less opinions tomorrow lol.

[Zilor]

Maybe a little less, but 100 hours isnt enough...

[Yemai]

It would be nice if it was possible to make the skill gains easier until you get to 60 so that a newly made character wouldnt be so lost for the first days of gameplay.
With a fighting skill of around 60 you can hack and slash at most common monsters without fear of being chopped and clubbed to death within a few minutes.
After the 60 you can make it harder to gain, but then atleast people can enjoy themselves more.
It would be more fun for the player I think.
Of course I am only talking about PvM and not about crafting wich is a whole different scenario.

[Saharah]

So a player who has played a character for say, a year, will feel like they have, and be able to look at their stats and see a year old character. A year in real life could be say, 25 years UO time.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------


Geez that would make all my characters 100 in December! You'd think by 100 I'd be getting weaker and senile, not stronger and smarter! lol =P Pleaaaaaase MrTact don't do this! My character is too cute to be 100 years old! *grins*

[Storm Blade]

"Definetely not. As for example tamers are way more powerfull as GM then warriors, it should take them longer to master the skill. Same for magery, necromancy, chivalry, bardskills..."

-- What have you been smoking since AoS came out and where can I get some?? AoS has Nerfed Tamers beyond recognition. Warriors can now kill anything a tamer can, only warriors can kill it FASTER. Yet Warriors can be GM'd in 3 days, and tamers in about 2 months.

That is WAY un balanced. Lets break it down....

T: Tamers can kill Dragons, Daemons, or about anything with the right template....
W: Warriors can kill the same stuff with the right template, just they do it 2x as fast. Winner: Warriors

T: Taming is Increadibly boring and time consuming to train befor you get ANY use out of it, and you make almost no money doing it.
W: Warriors hunt monsters for skill gains, which is fun, gets them items, and actually starts making decent money once you hit about 65%
Winner: Warriors

T: Tamers cant really PvP well. Not enough room in the template for for most of the necisary PvP skills like wrestle, inscription, or in some cases even Eval Int.
W: Almost any successful PvM warrior template is good for PvP as well, exception maybe being Peace Warriors.
Winner: Warriors

T: Tamers take about two months at LEAST to GM unless you seriously powergame
W: Warriors take about two weeks to GM, and can be powergamed in 3 days maybe less (I did Sword/Tac/Anat in 3) with most of their other common skills not too far behind...
Winner: Warriors

Solution: Taming needs to take ALOT less time to GM because the reward is not as high as it used to be AND/OR Warrioirs need to take LONGER to GM because the reward is ALOT higher than it used to be.


In short, YES a peace tamer can take on almost anything short of Doom monsters in the game. So can a Peace Warrior, only they can kill faster, and it takes them about 75% less time to train their skills.

[Yemai]

Something else ...
I personally think its sad that nowaday's you seem to have to be a GM to realy get the fullest out of UO.
Look at all the forums, they are filled with posts like "How to GM this or that skill, what to make and what to use and where to go and what to do ect. ect."
Of course skill is very important and the better you get with the skill, the more you can accomplish. But right now it looks like as this is the only thing to do in UO.
GM your character so that you can join the rest of the crowd.
Its good that you focus on how to improve the skill mechanics, but please do not let skill dominate the game!
With some more attention to other sides of the game, like what the Seers did, it mostly didnt matter much how strong and skilled your character was.
You enjoyed the game because your imagination was triggered, because you were caught up in a scenario, a riddle or a contest.
Please, put some focus on those areas aswell?

[Yemai]

I use macro's, the reason is that I do not want to click the mouse for every action.
I use macro systems wich are 3rd party programs.
The reason for that is because there are no macro systems in UO.
I believe that when you create a macro system to be used inside UO, you would have much better control on macro'ers.
It's customer friendly aswell as people do not have to go out to search for 3rd party macro systems.

[Saharah]

- How much should I care about macroing prevention?




Another question for MrTact: Since you bring up macroing...My question is this: Since macroing with UOA is allowed, why not allow other 3rd party Macro programs?


My point here is, what difference does it really make? A macro program is a macro program and most are not all that different from each other. I use them at work on a regular basis and am fairly competent at using them. The only character I used a macro with is my Tailor. I started macroing at about 74ish for one reason and one reason only! Developing the Tailoring skill is BORING! At 74 you make oil cloth after oil cloth after oil cloth after oil cloth after oil cloth after oil cloth after oil cloth after oil cloth after oil cloth after oil cloth after oil cloth after oil cloth after oil cloth after oil cloth after oil cloth after oil cloth after oil cloth after oil cloth after oil cloth after oil cloth after oil cloth after oil cloth...you got bored just reading that didn't you? =] You don't move around much at all, it's difficult to visit with others and work tailoring. You just want to get it done so you can have some fun with that character, make some cool stuff with your name on it and get some of the reward goodies. Getting the rewards of the LBOD's are tedious enough in itself.

I just don't see the harm in macroing and I don't see what difference it makes which program you use. It still took me a good amount of time to GM the skill. Other's claim they can GM other skills in in 2 or 3 days...personally I don't see how, I never have. If thats the case.....I'd like to be able to macro legally, with the program of my choice and I'd prefer not to be banned if I leave long enough to go to grab a Dr. Pepper or answer the door! I pay my 10 bucks per month, on time, everytime and I have for years...I'd like to get that character developed so I can have some fun too!


Sorry...I don't think its fun making thousands of oil cloths and I find it quite stressful trying to rez someone at 80ish and fizzling 40 times with a room full of monsters locked on me in Doom! I see no point in paying for stress when I get tons of it on a daily basis in the real world free of charge! Since the implementation of AoS and the publish that came with it...I find this game more stressful than fun. That makes me sad because I do love this game. Perhaps you're onto something with these ideas MrTact.

I find it's importen to make it so playing the game will be the best way to gain skills. Any kind of macroing is bad, it's boring and it make you play alone.

In the past, we could gain skills from being near others, who was using a skill. Maybe we could get some of the community back, if you got better gain from being together with others as from standing alone on a boat or in your house.

Maybe a group of warriors would gain the shared skills faster if they was hunting together and miners, lumbers, would gain faster with grouping up too.

Now where we can lock skills, we won't get the problem with gain of unwanted skills.

The first years, Uo was addictive .. I couldnt stay away. I believe it was the community feeling, that did that.

Something went wrong in UO, players did not more depent of each others and we lost that community feeling.

Community feeling in UO = more money/accounts to EA.

If I look back, powerhour was one of the worse add to UO. I was guildmaster, and my members used to group up, when they got online. With PH, I alwas heard, "not now, PH". If a player had 3 hours to play and 3 chars to train, there was no time left for the community.

I do believe Trammel in some way was bad too. It made alot unbalance in the combat skills and in the economy.
Players was able to farm to mich with little risk and they did not need to group up for protection. Sure you can make monsters so hard, that they have to group up, but then the risk get to big in the PvP zones and they will be a desert.

I think it's about time to remove some Trammel zones, with my best will, I can't understand why Malas needed to be Trammel Zone, special when Necromancy was meant to be evil.

The complains before Trammel was lose of items when dying to PK's.
Do we really need Trammel zones now?
Now we do have 100% secure houses, you can make vendor houses, where you can be total safe on the patio behind a low wall. Place the vendors there, so customers can asccess them from outside.
You can make deals with your customers without risk to get killed. Only risk is when you are gating/recalling in.
If the price for incurance get lowered or better depent of the value of the item.
A high level PvP item should not be cheap to insure, but regular gm stuff should be almost free to insure.

Flowers and BODs are nice, but it take far to long time. If I grow flowers and do BOD's, my first hours a day will be used to care for my flowers or seach for sbods to my lbods. It's time I will use to play a single player game and not being with others. I won't add to the community feeling and I will feel UO is my second job.

Make a auto care system for plants, so they can use potions and water from lockdown kegs and water through (can't spell it). Maybe let the plants grow a little more slow with auto care as if you do it manuel.

Make the BOD system more easy to handle, maybe color the bods in the ingots/leather color and make a symbol on them to tell if weapon, plate, chains, ...leather, studded ... items.
This will make it easier to sort them and easier to find what you are looking for on PC vendors.

Making players travel around to visite vendors is a good thing. Making then surfing the web for bods is a bad thing.

Always keep in mind, when you changes stuff, that be skill gains or other thing. Will it add to the community feeling or hurt it.

Any kind of interactions is good for the community feeling, even non consent PvP.

[Obi-Wan KenOObie]

-------------------------------------------------------
- How much should I care about macroing prevention? --
-------------------------------------------------------

Isn't every crafter FORCED to macro ? Can anyone imagine creating a GM Poisoner by clicking "Use Skill - Poisoning, click Poison bottle, click fishsteak" until 100% poisoning ?? You'd get insame by doing that.. Also if you'd record that uo-macro (without looping it) and play it over and over again, you would get INSANE

[MoonWhisper]

I'd have to agree here, how about fixing the tamers before looking into everything else you plan on? and no I dont want you to make the skill easier to attain we have enough 100+ taming twinks running around from jewelery. Taming use to be worth something but now with the changes to combat, items, poisoning, defense, parry and such warriors can out damage my dragon and live longer usually. I've seen some with shield and jewelery giving enemies only a 5-10% chance to hit them, along with parry means they can take on anything in the game toe to toe and live, while my dragon who use to be able to take almost anything short of the champ spawns is having his butt handed to him by things like elder gazers and blood elementals. It use to be that you spent several months GMing taming instead of going the "Joe Tank" route because in the end you'd come out on top, it's not the case anymore. I've been playing since 97 and had a tamer since 2000, if I had known in 97 what you guys would do the the game as a whole I dont think I would have taken it off the shelf. Had I known what you would do to taming I would never have made a tamer. AoS wasnt even the start, introducing monsters that could kill tamed pets in just a few short hits wasnt right either.

As it stands now the only server I normally play on is Siege. It is the only one left that even resembles the game I loved when I started and you guys are begining to screw it up too. When AoS hits that shard it will be a disaster.

[kreysig]

<blockquote><hr>


- How much should I care about macroing prevention? Should I eliminate 8x8? If skill gain were more predictable and sane, would you even need it?


<hr></blockquote>


Don't eliminate it - there has to be some way of "training" skills that doesn't involve PvM!
At least now, if someone wants to play in any part of this game they know that they can train their characters up to the required skill level relatively easily. No-one wants to play a useless character fighting cows and horses for their entire game time. They want to have a character they can actually use on a level with everyone else in the game. If you do eliminate it, you'd better replace it with something that is just as effective, but less confusing (think of the poor new players). Perhaps stick in "training centres" like those oh-so-useless guild buildings that exist (like the warriors guild outside brit, or the rangers guild beside skara bank). If you want rapid skill gains, go train in there. Added bonus - you know exactly where to look for your unattended macroers.

The hard part now is getting the uber-items needed to compete in an item-based game. That can't be macroed - you have to either put in the time farming monsters, or just spend all those stacks of gold/ebay$$. Congratulations - instant anti-macro code!

<blockquote><hr>


How long should it reasonably take to GM a skill? Should all skills be the same?


<hr></blockquote>

No, all skills should not be the same. GMing the big "powerskills" - like taming/provo for instance - should take longer than the "functional" skills like magery/eval/med/melee/tactics/anat/healing/etc/etc.

Oh, and people that want to take up cooking shouldn't be hindered by slow skill gains.

However, if someone wants to train up their skills, they should not be hindered by some silly anti-macro code that means they can't gain without standing on their head while riding a llama backwards singing "I want to do it with madonna".

<blockquote><hr>


For difficulty-based skills, what information do you need? If a task isn't hard enough for you, should it tell you that?


<hr></blockquote>

Couldn't care less to be honest. I suppose it'd be handy for spell-casters. You already have it in place for tamers of course.

<blockquote><hr>


I'm thinking about decoupling stat gain completely from skill gain -- so every 15 minutes, you would just gain a stat point, up to your daily limit. Is that a bad idea?


<hr></blockquote>

This doesn't gel with your anti-macro stance. WBB will just be full of people standing there gaining stat points. Much better to tie it into skill *usage* (not gain), so that you have to be doing something to gain. Even if it's just standing at WBB macroing begging or something.

[Yossarian5]

I think we can all agree that the repetitive nature of skill gain is farely boring, and tends to recluse people into spending most of their time just working on skills. To fix that the whole system would have to be rethought, so that's a little difficult to expect a change from. However, I would like to see gains come in bunches instead of 1's or 2's, like instead of making 100's of gorgets for .5 - 2.0 gains, why not try and make it more complicated to make a single gorget and have higher rewards from each one made. Like break up the process of making a gorget into several steps. Bring up a little window of a flat piece of metal...Now melt the metal down, where would u like to hammer the metal, now cool the metal in water, and so on. This would make the monotonous nature of skill gain more interactive and fun, make macro'ing incredibly complicated, and make skill gains more due skill through personal experience rather than just a number. Think Bassmaster 2000 and then incorporate that thought into UO fishing. How fun would that be? /php-bin/shared/images/icons/smile.gif It is a lot to ask from a Dev team already bogged down with a lot of work, but I can dream can't I? /php-bin/shared/images/icons/smile.gif

[Lady Chele]

Yes I have to agree a very scary post. I think mage med eval are the 3 main skills necessary for 90 percent of chars in game. I have played over 3yrs and all chars on all 4 of our accts use these skills daily. Removing 8x8 would be horrific for the simple fact that most people work these 3 skills before moving onto what their chars r gonna be, be it a mule, a tamer or a bard or a pvper. A necessity to most and a requirement to survive. Ive paid my dues and worked my tamers, my mules, my bards and pvpers for my hubby. And 8x8 isnt easy. You have to know how to use it and what resources r needed for that particular skill and it challenges me to work a mage to 120 and so forth. I have spent 3yrs building some of the best chars and thank you god most of ours r done because if 8x8 is eliminated that would be like taking my left arm from me.

I dont unattend macro 8x8, I sit and do that particular chars skills till they r done. Basic 3 then I move onto whatever skills are going on them. I dont run scripts, and most other skills I work by hand and have come to learn the ins and outs of skill building and gaining. That is what I enjoy in game.

The satisfaction of spending hrs and days and maybe weeks building one helluva char. If too tell me I am sry no 8x8 and would take months to build a mage. Bah, the game would become very vet ended then as most vets have most of these skills and considering the new player population who r learning 8x8 and skill building. That would be a horrific experience for some.

My opinion on 8x8 leave it, its been here this long y take it. You took powerhour which was a godly hr for most of us who loved to work a char in that particular time. You took seesaw for stats so it takes weeks to gain the proper stats u need. Now lets just take 8x8 so everyone is basically screwed then totally.

Sry I dont see a point to making this game so hard no one wants to play.
Its a game let it remain fun not so hard u get so frustrated u hate it.
Your thinking of all your new accts who dont remember the good, the bad and the ugly in Uo over the yrs. Why not for once think of the vets who paid their dues for yrs and leave one thing we can still feel like we have control over.

Thanks
Lady Chele

[Honkwomp]

My very first reaction is "Uh OH!!!" but here is my two cents

- ----How much should I care about macroing prevention? Should I eliminate 8x8? If skill gain were more predictable and sane, would you even need it?-----

I see 8x8 as a mini exploit. However, I am a VERY strong advocate of a skill gain system that you can "work" such as what existed with power hour. I liked the idea that I could work very hard for part of my game play and be rewarded for that work by additional skill gains.

------- How long should it reasonably take to GM a skill? Should all skills be the same?-----

I dunno, but unless you know the exploits, it takes too damn long right now. Hate to sound like a power hour whiner, but until some skills gains were broken while being improved, it took a couple of weeks working your ass off during power hour to GM them. Again, if I work very hard for a few weeks, seems that should be enough. Unlike many games, being a GM in UO is just the start, it is not the end game.

Some skills should be inherently harder, however, it seems that they are that way right now. Taming to me, is very hard for example.

------ I'm thinking about decoupling stat gain completely from skill gain -- so every 15 minutes, you would just gain a stat point, up to your daily limit. Is that a bad idea? ------

Here is a perfect example of someone pissing away coding time on something that was not broken. The old system, where you would ping pong was working fine, players were happy with it, and it was not breaking anything. Bring back ping pong, then leave it alone!

I don't believe that macroing is the biggest sin committed by players. Most players currently use 8X8 and UOA macroing in they way that they were intended. That is, attended! There will always be a small portion of players that abuse the system. Not to question your programming skills, but I don't believe that you will ever be able to program out exploitations of the games mechanics. I believe that 8X8 able skills are fine just the way they are. If you wanted to get rid of unattended macroers on the high seas, make them attackable by players in Tram. You could add a context menu button to players avatars that is accessible by all which is a querry for response. If the player recieves the querry and doesn't respond in a few minutes turn them grey. That would be sooooooo fun. It would bring pirates back! In Fel, you don't see many unattended macroers because of the pirating. It also brings back a sense of player justice. The macro whiners could form their own pirate guilds and hunt the high seas for macroers. Of course, third party software could probably respond to such querrys but those are the guys who are really giving the macro kiddies a bad name anyway. If the player making the querry suspects third party software....PAGE!

GMing a skill should not take forever but the time and effort should be comenserate with the power of the skill. I currently believe that the current system is fine for the most part. Most people who whine about skills not taking enough time to GM are really the already skill blessed minority. They are basically trying to protect their gold farms. Heres a suggestion. Establish player guilds like the thief guild that allow you to gain skills faster as an apprentice/journeman/adept...etc. When in this guild you would have to be near a GM+ player to gain skills at the increased rate. This would promote player interaction as well as put another hurdle in front of the unattended macroers. What was that virtue thingie you guys were gonna push...humility or something?

Information while training would be GREAT. Knowing if a monster is too hard or easy for you to gain off of would be a welcome innovation. But we should be able to turn it off and on so that we are not constantly bombarded with messages.

Decoupling stat gains from skill gains doesn't make any sense to me. My strength goes up just because I stay logged for 15 min? If this was the way life worked you would put schools and gyms out of business. *secretly wishes as he eats jelly donut*

[Sue Wing]

Actually i think the whole trade skill system is the worst of any currently used in online games. It takes far too many materials , and money, to actually get to the "status" of GM, and then theres sod all special about getting the "status".Practically everyone has a GM this, or GM that, and use them just to supply their own chars. Everything is a simple item, no gatehring of resources to produce a " recipe" to make something. For example, plate armour is xingots, hit it, you either get something or you dont, wheres the padding?? As for the bod system, enough has been said about it already, suffice it to say i have a 110 smith, whos hasnt got anything out of bods apart from runic and a few ash. and i dont do it for the 110 tailor either now, both get very low end bods to fill, so is a complete and utter waste of time. The trade skills system in DAoC is far far superior, and instead of bods, you actually have to deliver orders to specifically named npc's, which prevents the huge queues of smiths in the smithy.
As for enhancing, pffft, got to get the appropriate tool for that, so i give up on that as well as its dependant on bods.
so all in all, i have gm's in all "trade" skills that are sat doing sod all except take up slots in the accounts. although not for much longer as i'm cancelling 2 out of 3 accounts and handing everything over to someone else.

8x8 - Kill it. Definitely make skill gain more predictable and sane. Bring back Powerhour, I never felt the need to play a character in training more than an hour a day when we had it. But leave GGS in to GM those skills that are still broken (such as Cartography).

GM time - 60 hours. Everyone is already multi-GM's anyway, all you're doing is penalizing new characters at this point and giving them incentive to macro to "catch up". Remove the requirement that you have to use your skill on a certain level of opponent to gain skills, it requires people to hunt list of "what to fight when" and is highly frustrating.

Skill differences - 60 hours for all skills, there should be no skill that takes "forever" to GM (sounds like we need RoT doesn't it?).

Difficulty-based skills - Yes, an indication that the task isn't hard enough to gain you skill would be awesome. Be sure to make it configurable so people can turn it off for one or more skills. Automatically disable it for a skill when that skill is at the cap.

Decoupling stats from skills - No way! You should have to perform a skill that would affect a stat to gain that stat. The current "gain a random stat that is set to rise" is not realistic and needs to be shelved. Remove the daily limit for stat gain.

[Jon von Darkmoor]

How about making Skill gain like Stat gain in the proposed 1 pt every 15 minutes?
You gain 1 full point of a skill (while using it)every 15 mins for a max of 10 pts a day.
and get rid of the .1 crap
So from 30 it would take you 7 days to Gm.
Make it the same for all skills across the board.

In the game of jewelry ,why should I be out gaining .1 in Taming for weeks to get 10 points when someone else can go find a +10 bracelet and get the same skill level in minutes?

Make it fun to buy the game ,gm your characters in a week and actually go play with the big boys. /php-bin/shared/images/icons/laugh.gif

With this method 8x8 and macroing wouldnt be needed because with normal skill useage you could gain the same as a powergamer.

[TheBetrayed]

I have not played (again) in several weeks, or even looked at these boards, and I may well never return to the game because of the bankrupt situation in which one loses more to insurance than one can gain hunting for gold. I look at stratics every couple of weeks on the off chance that some angel will descend and make this horrible nightmare go away, and let me return to the game I gave 5 years of my life to. So far this thread has been the only glimmer, and it is in fact just that. Still...

ALL new games coming out have thrown away the idea that one should labor like a slave for vast periods before being able to begin playing.

The general trend is to cut traditional leveling times by 75 - 90%.

And leveling is defined as what you have to do to prepare a character to begin playing the game (doing anything other than leveling). In uo this means at a minimum gm'ing enough skills so you have some sort of chance against anything other than earth elementals (which seem to be unique in that they can be found without magic-using critters along, so without a million-gp suit of armor on you can afford to hunt them, but of course with most of the players on a shard all crammed into shame 1 all the time this becomes impossible). For pvp in uo leveling up means gm+'ing at least 2-4 skills, gm'ing the rest. And gm+'ing (going over 100) of course means somehow getting power scrolls, which means years of labor to get the gold, or some very good luck at the spawns, or pking/stealing. In regard to getting ready to begin the game uo is by far the worst game ever. And the standard practice has been that once people adapt to the last massive changes and learn how, everything gets ripped out and replaced, forcing a whole new round of leveling.

This level-grind has been trying to drive me from the game for 4+ years. It almost succeeded. (see top paragraph for the actual last straw.)

The level-grind has had its day.

Those who will use the W word to describe my post of course have an (un)hidden agenda. Since they have gained an upper hand by exploits, cheats, shear hours of macroing, stealing PS, etc, etc, etc, they want to keep the upper hand by keeping things difficult for everyone else. They of course want things kept as they are, the worst ever.

I have no doubt that a vast hemorrhage of paying customers has driven you to consider these changes. While new sales may be going on perhaps you have seen that try-for-a-month'ers are not going to keep this company alive when the old-timers have all cut and run. That is the very reason you need to consider far more drastic steps - when the ship is sinking you throw the elephant overboard, you don't consider a new paint-job.

The Solution

Cut all time/iteration requirements for skill and stat gain by very large amounts, 70, 80, 90%. Let the dedicated players play the game, and let the casual player at least be IN the game. There is no longer any way to pretend that making it take months just to level Magery has any value. The players who once did that are jumping ship, and the new players (who have no chance of ever having a house, etc) are not impressed. The current generation of games coming out will not impose the penalties you do, and your player base will go to them, and this time they won't return.

It's like the guy in the news today who went hiking and got his arm caught under a boulder. He lay there for days and realized no one was going to rescue him, and the arm was ruined anyway. If he didn't do something he was going to die. So he took out his pocketknife and amputated the arm, then walked to where he could get help.

Do you have the courage to make the cuts?

I'll check back in a few weeks to find out. Or then again maybe it's time to stop paying for accounts that I'm more and more convinced I'll never play again.

<blockquote><hr>

8x8 - Kill it. Definitely make skill gain more predictable and sane.

<hr></blockquote>

I agree wholeheartedly with that!

<blockquote><hr>

How long should it reasonably take to GM a skill? Should all skills be the same?

<hr></blockquote>

Being a GM doesn't matter much now and that is what should be addressed. For those of us who don't use 8x8 and finally GM a skill, there is a major let down because it's as though you're in the 80 skill point level now.

[Fenara]

OH GOD PLEASE NO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! This terrifies me! What is wrong with the system the way it is now? it works doesn't it? And if something isn't broken, it doesn't need fixing! there are so many things still broken since AoS... please don't break more! Leave the stuff that works alone!

I like the skill system how it is now. I gain through normal play, and when i get stuck, I will use the 8x8 method for a few gains to get it started up again. As far as macroing goes, there will never be a cure... people will always figure out a way to beat the system... so you spend 6 weeks trying to beat macroers for this system, publish your work, then 2 days later someone has it figured out and is telling his/her friends about it... 2-3 weeks later everyone is doing it and you have to start all over again... a waste of time and money that could be spent fixing REAL issues as far as I'm concerned. If they want to jump their characters ahead, that's their business. I have played for 5 months and just now finally GMed my smith, which to me was a great accomplishment, and I am within 20 points of GMing my mage, which I also look forward to. That is MY preference. Let them have 8x8. I like it because if I am actually trying to get a gain or two, I can use 8x8 and get out of a rut.


"- I'm thinking about decoupling stat gain completely from skill gain -- so every 15 minutes, you would just gain a stat point, up to your daily limit. Is that a bad idea? "

Yes. Definitely a bad idea. I think that would take some of the fun out of it... Ok, I log on and sit there and gain in a stat (kind of like gaining in focus). No thanks... I enjoy trying to get my stats up by doing stuff.

"- For difficulty-based skills, what information do you need? If a task isn't hard enough for you, should it tell you that? "

only if there is a way to turn the zillion messages that I'm going to get from making stuff below my level off so I don't have them covering my screen! LOL... I (and many many other players) sometimes run into financial binds, and then must do tasks way below our level to make a bit of quick cash. I liked the idea of maybe talking to a guildmaster who can tell you (maybe from an average of the last 10-20 things you did/killed/tamed/whatever) whether you are at or below something for your skill gains... that way those of us who don't give a rats rear end don't have to deal with the game spamming us every half second.

"- How long should it reasonably take to GM a skill? Should all skills be the same? "

Why? are you planning on making taming easier to GM? *smiles* I think the gains you get so far are pretty well balanced according to profession. I think that if someone has an older account, like 2 or 3+ years, that they should have extra points to play with at character creation (MY account is only 5 months, so, no, this would not benefit me, but I can see how making new chars suck for them since they have had to do it so many times...

[Lochen]

I would have to agree that now is NOT the time to go playing with the skill gain system. There are WAY too many bugs that need to be addressed before we go causing new ones. And by the way... We've been adding alot of new things with scenarios etc. How bout removing a few? IE what if lizardmen disappeared or a city. Might help with the information overload =p

And please look at Taming and GGS. Its busted for quite a few people. Someone posted a gain diary a short time ago. There were generally 500-1000 *optimum* animals tamed between each gain. About 1500 at the worst. And no, that wasnt in one day either. As has been mentioned, Taming cetainly isnt the Uber PvM skill anymore. So there's no reason to keep punishing it.

[jglide]

How about doing a success check on stats before gaining in skill.

For example: Doing a roll based on intelligence for magery gain.
or strength for lumberjacking, etc.

[DrDolittle]

<blockquote><hr>

- How much should I care about macroing prevention? Should I eliminate 8x8? If skill gain were more predictable and sane, would you even need it?

<hr></blockquote>One big reason that people macro is that skill gain is generally boring and frustrating. Maybe the first time you GM a skill it is fun and challenging, but after that it is just a pain. Most of the things added to prevent macroing hurt your legitimate players more than the macroers and eventually forced legitimate players to do weird things like 8x8 to gain in a reasonable time. Rather than worrying about 8x8 and anti-macro just make is so people don’t need 8x8 and macroing.<blockquote><hr>

- How long should it reasonably take to GM a skill? Should all skills be the same?

<hr></blockquote>I am so glad that you asked this question because I have the answer! /php-bin/shared/images/icons/smile.gif

A 7xGM Should Take NINE Hours! /php-bin/shared/images/icons/smile.gif

Today, thanks to the Advanced Character Program, it is possible to calculate a dollar value for a skill point. With a skill point dollar value in hand one can then calculate how long it should take to create a 7xGM character at a given wage. Let’s do the math!

OSI will sell you a full 395 skill points for only $29.95.

That means that a skill point is then worth $.076
[ $29.95 / 395 = .0758 dollars per skill point ]

At a $6.00 per hour wage one could then buy 79 skill points per hour
[ $6.00 / .0758 = 79 skill points per hour ]

So, at a $6.00 per hour wage, buying 100 (GM) skill points would take 76 minutes
[ 100 / 79 X 60 = 76 minutes ]

For a 7xGM it would then take about 9 hours
[ 76 X 7 = 532 minutes or 8 hours 52 minutes ]

There you have it. At a wage of only $6.00 per hour, a 7xGM character is "worth" 9 hours of your time.

Seriously though, I don’t think that any single skill should take longer than about 20 play-time hours to GM. Some should be easier. Please refer to my previous post for some thoughts on how the gain system might be designed to give you a very good control over gain rate.<blockquote><hr>

- For difficulty-based skills, what information do you need? If a task isn't hard enough for you, should it tell you that?

<hr></blockquote>Going with the system outlined in my earlier post this problem would disappear. The gain benefit of using a skill greater or less than the "sweet spot" of your range would be worth less that using the skill close to your sweet spot but the activity would not be "worthless". Therefore you would not need to inform the player that he was doing something too easy or hard.<blockquote><hr>

- I'm thinking about decoupling stat gain completely from skill gain -- so every 15 minutes, you would just gain a stat point, up to your daily limit. Is that a bad idea?

<hr></blockquote>Either that or just make it so you gain a stat when you use any skill. The problem now is that some skills do not seem to be giving any stat gains at all.

[ArtsCrafter]

Too many posts on here to read through in one sitting, so I apologize if I repeat anything.

<blockquote><hr>

- How much should I care about macroing prevention? Should I eliminate 8x8? If skill gain were more predictable and sane, would you even need it?

<hr></blockquote>
Preventing UM'ing is fairly important, since it's unfair to those of us who actually sit at the screen and put in the time for a character. I like the suggestion about putting in more ocean spawn, that would cut out a lot of boat macroing. If the gain system were a little more sane (i.e. easier to gain through casual play and harder to powergame) then yes, 8x8 would be unnecessary.

<blockquote><hr>

- How long should it reasonably take to GM a skill? Should all skills be the same?

<hr></blockquote>
I agree that gaining a skill should certainly take a while the first time you do it, but that training magery on your 7th character isn't fun at all. First time around, skills should generally take 5-6 months of casual play (note: casual play, first time around) to GM. They should definitely NOT all be the same; things like taming, the bard skills, magery, etc. should be harder than things like carpentry (virtually worthless now that all add-ons are redeedable) and the "joke" skills like begging and herding.

<blockquote><hr>

- For difficulty-based skills, what information do you need? If a task isn't hard enough for you, should it tell you that?

<hr></blockquote>
It would be nice to have a feature like this, but you need to be able to turn it off when you want too.

<blockquote><hr>

- I'm thinking about decoupling stat gain completely from skill gain -- so every 15 minutes, you would just gain a stat point, up to your daily limit. Is that a bad idea?

<hr></blockquote>
It would be nice, since some skills don't let you gain stats (such as my beginning bard, who trains peacemaking while taking care of the plants, but I have to use arms lore every 15 mins instead because peace does nothing) but there's too much potential for people to sit and UM for it, even with a daily limit.

I think that what the stat gain system really needs is a variable timer, kind of like GGS has. Basically, you can gain more stats per day, and more quickly, if you have a lower stat total. That way it's easier to get a new character up to a good level while keeping people from switching stats all the time.

[imported_Hammer]

Mr Tact, how about checking ggs to make sure it's working (since you're currently studying skill gains).

My tailor has been stuck at 119 for 22 days in a row. Since it takes about 1 hour to get 200 bones, and my tailor burns through the pile in minutes, it's getting to be a little ridiculous.

It's pretty sad when you go to sleep &amp; wake up consumed with the annoyance of all the time wasted over the last 3 weeks trying to get a lousy .1 gain.

GGS does work on Great Lakes after a character has reached 119 right???

For the record: yes my character has plenty of room left for skill gains, yes my tailoring arrow is turned up, yes I've been making bone leggings &amp; bone armor, yes I've tried having my character commit suicide in hopes of resetting his skill gaining ability (silly rumor I heard), yes I'm losing my mind, yes I know 120 will not help with enhancing items (even though I think that is ridiculous), yes I know you're thinking "boo hoo, poor Hammer"...

[scottish]

Hmmm...I'm a little torn on macro prevention. I don't use 8x8 so wouldn't miss it if it was gone.

A heckuva lot shorter than it does now! I started a Blacksmith on a second account in January and he still hasn't hit 80.0 in blacksmithing. I am only a casual player, but usually play 2-3 hours on the weekend. It's a major bummer to have to create a neverending stream of gorgets or whatever for that whole 3 hours only to see the skill increase .5!

I think it would be nice to see a message about a skill action being to easy or too hard, but as others have said it should be coded to allow one to turn it off or on.

I agree that it seems kind of silly to just have stats raise randomly and with no associated action. I agree that the old flip-flop method was nice.

oooo some good questions.

<blockquote><hr>

- How much should I care about macroing prevention?

<hr></blockquote>
I think it is good right now. Macroing is the only way some of us can actually get skill gains done. Remember Powergaming is a playstyle also.

<blockquote><hr>

Should I eliminate 8x8? If skill gain were more predictable and sane, would you even need it?

<hr></blockquote>
This is an extremely tough question. If it wasn't for 8x8 I would have gone INSANE working skills.(I have 30 characters, 20-25 fairly advanced). Now when you say predictable and sane. What does that mean?

<blockquote><hr>

- How long should it reasonably take to GM a skill? Should all skills be the same?

<hr></blockquote>
All Skills Should NOT be the same. Because all skills are not equally powered.

Taming and Barding(Peace and Provoke) should be the hardest skills to GM(and 120). 3 months-1 year for non powergaming(to GM).

Then should come the 3 magic classes and thier supplements(Magery, Meditation, eval int, resist, Chivalry, Necromancy, Spirit Speak). 2 Months-8 months for non powergaming(to GM).

Then should come the "Thief and T Hunter skills"-Stealing, Lockpick, Carto, Hiding, Stealth. 2 Months to 6 months.

Then Blacksmithy, Tailoring and the other trade skills(Fishing,Tinkering), 1 month to 4 months.

Warrior skills, Fencing, Swords, Macing, Archery, Tactics, Anatomy, healing and Battle Focus. 2 weeks-2 months.

Now that may seem long to a lot of people, but this is for non powergaming. I think there should be limits on powergaming. But not restricting their gains per day. Maybe just get 10 points+(5+ at 80 or better, and 0-50 would not be affected at all) your gains would slow down, then another 5 or 10 points it would slow down even further.

<blockquote><hr>

- For difficulty-based skills, what information do you need? If a task isn't hard enough for you, should it tell you that?

<hr></blockquote>

I think that would be a good idea. Would help a lot of us, also in the option's menu have it an option to tell us if a skill we are using is locked or no points are going down for it. I remember I worked taming for a week and gained 0.0 and found out it was because I had nothing going down.

<blockquote><hr>

- I'm thinking about decoupling stat gain completely from skill gain -- so every 15 minutes, you would just gain a stat point, up to your daily limit. Is that a bad idea?

<hr></blockquote>

Yes and No. Overall I think its a good idea. But I don't think you should be able to sit at WBB and gain 1 stat every 15 minutes without doing anything, would make macroing even worse. So its kinda iffy.

[starhawk45]

I feel sorry for you, Mr. Tact. I've been here reading the posts for hours now and I think I'm going cross-eyed and I have an extreme headache! &lt;ugh&gt; But, you wanted to open this can of worms while you went on vacation and its worms you'll get in your lap for opening it and leaving it! &lt;heh&gt;

Macroing....hmmmm....a touchy subject to address on the boards to be sure, but one that has a simple answer to eliminate this problem. Make it so the people don't have to macro for gains! Why do we macro now? Another easy answer! Because no one in their right mind will sit on a computer clicking MILLIONS of times to get to GM a skill! (and if they do, they'll have Carpal Tunnel, mush for a mind and eyestrain headaches from staring mindlessly at a screen doing a repetitive task. Not much up on current trends of computer related injuries are ya?) After reading most all of the posts on the boards, I can see where several concepts can be incorpoated into a cohesive and workable solution to avoid having to macro anything except to use a skill or skills while actually PLAYING the game and not working at it.
- Powerhour was a good thing. It allowed increased skill gains for a very short period of time. You still had to work at it, but not nearly as hard as you do now under the GGS system. But it also created macroers. Those that were just TOO lazy or had TOO much ego to get to GM that the few decided to exploit this wonderful period of time and ruin it for the majority. I don't remember which post it was, but I loved the idea of actually having guilds where if you occupied the area, you could expect increased gains. So, incorporate the two ideas. Make it so that there's a guild (building or area) you can sit at for a limited period of time and get increased gains ONCE per day. Not only do you promote community, but you make it very easy to catch that minority that macro unattended. A simple, but random, que from a GM or the game itself could "test" to see if there was someone actually there or not. Ask a question that demanded an intelligible answer. Something that only a real person could answer and not give a 'canned' answer such as that which 3rd party programs might provide to exploit the system. On the other side of this coin, gaining while outside this special area, work = reward, but with limits. No one enjoys the idea of having to create 40,000 oil cloths to GM Tailoring or tame 40,000 animals to GM Taming or hammer out 80,000 iron ingots to GM smith and the list goes on. I can go to Fel and buy the ore to make ingots and the same for wood and reagents in a reasonably short time. All well and fine, but what about the overpopulated Trammel? The spawns of these resources are incredibly long. I could spend hours, nay nearly a whole day, just recalling from shop to shop in a gallant, but feeble, attempt to buy all the leather or wood or regs I need to GM a skill. It's not something anyone enjoys having to do as most of the time the demand far outweighs the supply by magnitudes! Just let us go into a shop, buy all the wood, reagents, ingots we want/need and let us be on our merry way. That takes care of supply and demand. Now what? Now you bring the skills more in line. Making 40,000 oil cloths is lame and uncalled for. All you've learned is how to make really good oil cloths, but instead it allows you to make high quality leather and studded goods now. Does that seem right when I've never made a single leather thing to get to GM? I think not. Bring it more in line with the skills! Allow me to make normal items easier and make the exceptional harder! This way, if you want to invest in tons of leather in order to make that EQ bone armor suit, you're more than welcome to do so....at a price! Make 90-something Tailors HAVE to work in the higher leathers to get to GM. Make the smiths HAVE to work in the colored metals to get to GM! Tamers do have a long uphill climb to GM and its as it should be since they wield a lot of power! (No more crying from you tamers about how weak your dragons are! I sat and watched a tamer with a single WW clear ogre lord after ogre lord in seconds and never cast a single spell or lift a finger to help in the battle except for the occasional aid needed to keep it at full health while I could do nothing except leave. So much for archery gains today!) Bards are the same way. they weild a lot of power and it's rightly so that it should take a long time to GM. However, fighters need to have their gains slowed down. Walking through earth ele after earth ele does nothing to provide the training needed to take on dragon or a lich or a demon, yet this is the way things are. I can 5-6xGM a fighter in under a week easily w/o using any exploits, cheats or macroing.
Enough on macroing and it's reasoning. Want to avoid macroing? Make repetitive skill gains easier or bring the skills required more in line with the skill being used.

I think I've pretty much made clear my stance on all the questions you had except the last one, stat gain. Another can of worms about to slither into your slacks! (nice visual, huh? hee hee) Let me put it this way......it's BROKE! I made a bard character using the advanced template (because there is none for bards or tamers in the character creation table) not once nor twice, but three times!! Everytime I made one, I changed the stats around in a vain attempt to gain ANY stats and all to no avail! I GM'ed 4 skills on all three of these chars and never gained a single point in stats.....ever! It's been reported to proper channels and all I can get is the standard answer about how to gain stats. HAH! I've played this game for over three years now and there's nothing you can tell me thats new to me about how to gain stats. I know how to gain them, they just aren't coming! (For a bard char anyway. I have no probs with my other chars at all except that the gains come too slow. I agree that we need to gain stats faster at lower levels and slower at higher levels of skill. This allows a new character to actually get into the game sooner and not get bored and disgusted with killing umptine hundred hinds and harts! Remove the 10/day limit. this just makes me want to never start a new character cause they'll be so weak compared to the beefed up spawn that I don't want to play one. It's bad enough halving the gold for loot so that a new char has very little chance of becoming self-sufficient anytime within the next 6 months to a year. I won't even get into the luck system and how messed up that is. I'll save that one for another day and give your eyes and brain a rest now. /php-bin/shared/images/icons/laugh.gif

Enjoy!

[Burl]

My thought's on skill gain are to model it more closely to how people really learn. People do not learn by success, they learn by failure. One thing that has always bugged me is that in the stage when your 'paying your dues' for a characters development, every time you fail you know without a doubt that you've gained nothing. When you fail, you've just spent resources and in a material sense would actually have better off had you not made the attempt. This crosses your mind for every single failure. Even if you do go out and and try to get some real playing done, fail, die, lose your stuff, you know that you just should have just stayed off the computer that night.

I'm think that a very simple difficulty based system would be to have a good chance to gain every time you get a bad roll at something. To be more specific, when you fail, the chance to gain should depend on whether or not the action is something you *should* have been able to do. So, if you have a 99% chance to succeed at something, and you fail, you should have a 99% chance for a gain. 10% chance means 10% chance to gain on failure. That means the best learning efficiency would come at around 50% difficulty, which is kindof like it is now, but with some important psychological advantages. I believe that such a system would make for a more enjoyable experience for both learners and do-ers.

If your goal is to gain skill, you can feasibly do so by challenging yourself with things that are difficult in a real game setting. You may be getting your butt kicked, or spend alot of your time fleeing rather than looting, but you know that in spite of being empty handed, you are gaining skills. As it is now, if you aren't succeeding or killing things, you are really wasting your time and resources. Not only is this very frustrating, but it encourages sitting at home in a tedious but safe environment 'practicing'(macroing?).

If your goal is to simply succeed at some... goal, You don't have to curse the computer if you fail ten times in a row at something you previously have been very good at, because you will likely learn whatever is was that you had 'forgotten', with one or two little blue massages that everyone likes to see.

I really think that some kind of failure based system would be more realistic and more enjoyable.

[Dern_Ironskull]

Hmm, lots of good choices in this thread. The best suggestions have been the ones that minimize dev time. Putting something in that would not cause alot of bugs would be good too. Something that has been implemented before doesn't sound bad.

Should I eliminate 8x8?
Only way to do that is to eliminate the anti-macro code, right? This is a pretty good idea. I've been feeling like a newbie alot lately, lets go back to the skill gain we had in 97 when I was new /php-bin/shared/images/icons/smile.gif ummm, but WITH skill locks. I don't want to have to go running away from campfires like I used to.

RoT souds like a decent plan to take care of macroers. THis is not a bad idea either.

Could also increase the rate on the GGS, but you would probably still have to look individual skills that many beleive are "broken"

How long should it reasonably take to GM a skill? Should all skills be the same?
Sounds like RoT, again

what information do you need
Your skill has increased by 0.1

gain a stat point, up to your daily limit. Is that a bad idea?
Nah. Double the max points too. Let the noobs get some str easier.

summary
remove anti macro code
Deploy (re-instate) RoT
Keep GGS, but increase rate
Double stat points per day
Decrease stat time to 1 per 15min
Minimize dev time spent
Minimize bugs

[imported_landicine]

- How much should I care about macroing prevention? Should I eliminate 8x8? If skill gain were more predictable and sane, would you even need it?

Macroing prevention? It should be high priority. A person should never be able to get something for nothing. As for 8x8, unless certain skills (hiding, stealth, magery, necro, etc) become easier to gain, it is a much needed aid.

- How long should it reasonably take to GM a skill? Should all skills be the same?

Depends on the skill. Craft skills (many of them) don't really start until GM with marked exceptionals and high level metals and bods. Since these skills take a ton of materials, they should be based on quantity of material, and not on time. If you go through 60k ingots, you deserve to GM.

Provoke, magery, and taming should take a bit longer since they are highly useful at a variety of levels, but incredibly powerful at GM or beyond. However they shouldn't be harder to normally GM than they are now (by normal I mean natural play). Some skills that are useful in a minimal sense (remove trap, forensics, camping) should be easier to gain and actually work.

- For difficulty-based skills, what information do you need? If a task isn't hard enough for you, should it tell you that?

There should be a way to figure how difficult something is. What is my chance to provoke this dragon? How wimpy is this lock? I shouldn't have to look it up on a web page.

- I'm thinking about decoupling stat gain completely from skill gain -- so every 15 minutes, you would just gain a stat point, up to your daily limit. Is that a bad idea?

No, its a great idea. As it is now, people just use the useless skill arms lore or struggle to gain stat points. I would however increase the number gained per day (maybe 10 instead of six?)

[scottish]

Even 100 hours it too long to me. I usually play 2-3 hours on the weekend at most. On rare occassion if I meet up with a group 4-6. At the 2-3 hour rate it would take me close to a YEAR to GM...and that would be having to play EVERY weekend! (which ain't gonna happen).

As many have said in this thread UO is a game and should be FUN not a second job.

I enjoy the multiple skill and crafting aspects of the game, but I don't want to be 65 years old and finally attain my first 7xGM character. /php-bin/shared/images/icons/wink.gif

[Zilor]

Thats unfortunate but they cant make it reasonable for such a little amount of time because then it would be exceedingly fast for everyone else. You have to look at the average player and then the power gamer and finally the not often type player.

An as allways, if you dont play as much, you dont gain as much...

Maybe 100 hours to create a competent character, which is in my eye a character with 4 skills near GM but not quite there yet, home stretch.

[Donal Mor]

To think outside of the box... remove the numbers altogether from view of the players.

Joe smith tries to smith something... if he succeeds great. If not.. well he keeps trying until he does... hence training. No numbers are ever shown. Perhaps titles would be the only thing giving a rough idea on skill level.

Donal Mor

I gotta great idea....! Why dont you stop screwing up my game and the fun i have on it with your lame ideas....Aos sucked I worked long hard hours to gm resist and you go screwing it all up. Funny how a 3yr vet can get owned by a character one mth old because he has some better ring or bracelet then me cause he paid for that item when i worked my skills...Shouldnt pvp based on talent and skills not because someone has a special ring or item...whats the point of even working skills with these items out like this. Also I will add why did i spend money and time to get powerscrolls when now half of them mean absolutely nothing. Another thing what is the point of having a disarm thief that i worked a long time to get skills up to steal things and items that were good and now they can insure everything and its not stealable. As far as I am concerned about 8x8 any character i needed it on is already done but why are new people gonna wanna come play this game when you idiots make it so hard for them to catch up too players that have already built characters. I dont care if you make it easier for them to build skills too make characters as good as mine it doesnt mean they can play them as well as i can. That takes game time to get to know your character and how to use the given skills.

My stun mage=worthless
My disarm thief=worthless
My tamer (because of jewelry anybody can tame or ride a mare now)=worthless
My Pker=worthless (insurance)
The only character that is worth anything is my 120 bard and you will nerf that next week!

I might as well buy and build into an amazing ljer that does these fancy one hit kills! How lame is that.

Why dont you stop catering to whiney ass trammies, fix factions, fix pvp, fix spawns so you can pk and steal and not worry about taking out what we can use and worry about things you need to fix.

LAST NOTE: WHY DONT YOU WORK ON THE DAMN BLACKHOLE ISSUE BEFORE YOU CHANGE ANYTHING ELSE!

P.S. Bring back Pre pub 16!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Make the game fun again!! Cause Shadowbane is looking real nice now.

[PizzaDude]

1.) How much should I care about macroing prevention? Should I eliminate 8x8? If skill gain were more predictable and sane, would you even need it?

Unattended macroing is Not PLAYING the game, and harsh consiquences should be the result of such Lameness. Script Campers (ie: Doom, enough said...) should have even harsher punishments.
Ive never 8x8'ed a skill, but i think that it would be pritty rotten, having to boat around "Slow Forward" 8x's "use skill" "Slow Backward" 8x's, just to get decent skill gains. Look at Fighter classes - when i GMed my Fencer i didnt have to walk up 8 tiles "Crack the ogre", walk down 8 tiles "Crack the ogre": i just killed crap for hours and had FUN doing it. You got Anatomy raising, your Weapon Skill, Tactics, Healing (cus your getting hurt), Resisting Spells (when it was more usefull and worth raising past 65 or 70). Why should a Bard tring to get good gains in Peacemaking have to boat around to gain, when they could go practice in a more FUN place, like a dungeon or another {*insert fun place of choice here*}. So, in my non-professional opinion: 8x8 probably aint fun, and "If" Skill Gaining itself were more sane and predictable, that would be cool...

2.) How long should it reasonably take to GM a skill? Should all skills be the same?

Thats a hard question to answer. There is a wide variety of people that play for different reasons, and for variant amounts of time.
I do beleive that the GGS thats in place now, is flawed. For example: if you want to trade off skills for others, such as go from Fencing to Swordsmanship - its going to take longer to GM Swords then it did to GM Fencing because of the GGS. Its not going to accomodate to skills set do DECREASE, it only adjusts a timer based to the particular Skill's points that are raising and to the Total Amount in ALL skill points. When a skill is set to Decrease and you still have spare points to burn, you gain the points NOT Allocated to skills FIRST - It should be the reverse: Spend the decreasing skill points first.
I also beleive that the GGS is unkind to certain skills, such as Stealing and Hiding. The Delay Mechanism on these skills make it VERY aggrivating to train, (Please refer to your questions reguarding the 8x8 method for Fun and Reflection...) especially after you read the information in the PlayGuide on the UO.COM site about GGS timer bases. From 65.0 to 69.9 skill points (in a particular skill) at 500 total skill points (totaled from ALL skills) How long you ask? What!? 3.6 Hours for a Guaranteed Gain?! Thats NOT figuring in the 3 to 5 second delay between skill uses! Them few seconds really add up when training a difficult skill based on hard coded timers.
The only thing this Guarantees is somebody saying one of the following: "Wow, 3 hours of training and .1 skill gain to show... This freakin' sucks! Im sick of doing this." -OR- *wipes snot off keyboard* "uuh... ooh... gotta keep doing this, its the ONLY way to get good gains in this skill..." *starts dripping snot on keyboard again*
A skill gain bonus for the skills with delays would be a nice addition like, .001 skill per X seconds delay or something (You do the math and figure out a reasonable bonus, i just rant here /php-bin/shared/images/icons/smile.gif).

3.) For difficulty-based skills, what information do you need? If a task isn't hard enough for you, should it tell you that?

I think that a little statment if weither or not you're "Spinning your wheels", "Not really challanging yourself", "This is kinda hard", and "I cant do that yet!" would be really helpfull! Please add it.

4.) I'm thinking about decoupling stat gain completely from skill gain -- so every 15 minutes, you would just gain a stat point, up to your daily limit. Is that a bad idea?

Yea thats a bad idea to me. Stat points should be earned, like Skill points; not given.

Im glad that you've decided to take a look at the skill gain system. I know what you said was basically "No huge changes, just reorganizing", but i dont know whats "Huge" and whats "Reorganizing" in the programming world, so if some of my opinions and ideas are over the top... PLEEESE DONT HIT ME! ... ill be good...

Oh! Real quick, a WAY Early X-Mas List:
- Fix LootingRights in Tramm, Ilish, and Malas so you get to keep the loot that you did 90% of the work for.
- Add resist mods to each resist catagory for higher lvls of the Resisting Spells skill (is .3 or .5% for every 10 to 15 skill points insane? I dont know - You do the math!)
- More monster varieties in Doom! Im sick of looking at patchwork skeles, toss in a few "other" undeaders.
- And a new Van so i can haul my band's equiptment around without getting Tickets! TICKETS - TICKETS - TICKETS! (Gotta hate 'em)

[Fujur]

Lets look at this from two distances...

From the macro-level what we've had so far is mostly a one-size-fits-all system. It begs the question: Do we all play the game the same way? Apparently not. So it should stand that the gain systems need to cater to all of us. New players, older players, powergamers, adventurers, casual players and addicts alike. ... Sometimes wants will collide, sometimes they'll work together. Let's look at them...

<blockquote><hr>

How much should I care about macroing prevention? Should I eliminate 8x8? If skill gain were more predictable and sane, would you even need it?

<hr></blockquote>
Powergamers will want to powergame. While 8x8 seems silly and artificial, it is only artificial to the game when you take the 'adventurer' point of view and look over the fence at how a powergamer plays; Otherwise it's largely transparent. So then. Do Powergamer want to do without 8x8? I'm not sure, you need to ask them and not other gamer groups. Applying the wants of other groups (the newbies, the vets and the adventurers) full-on to Powegamers is just, well, not logical.

<blockquote><hr>

- How long should it reasonably take to GM a skill?

<hr></blockquote>
This is the part where all player classes will clash and the system needs to <font color=red>auto-adjust accordingly</font color=red>; which today it doesn't. The system should have 2 months (my personal values, replace for your own criteria here) as the median value, with the possibility of pulling it off in just 30 days of intense playing, 2 months of regular play, or 3 months of very casual gaming. This probably means the system keeps track of how long you're online, or -better yet- how many skill checks you have over a given period of time, and throttles itself accordingly. More casual players will get boosted gains towards the 2-month goal, regular players will fall naturally into the 2-month target, and powergamers will get throttled back towards a 30-day target.

<blockquote><hr>

Should all skills be the same?

<hr></blockquote>
I don't see a particular justification to make some skills harder than others. All skills grant different abilitites and while Tactics -on the surface- seems more useful than Begging, it all really depends on what you want to do in the game. At the end of the day all skill points are counted equally toward the cap. And while skills are at the base of the game, items ARE the core of the game now.

<blockquote><hr>

- For difficulty-based skills, what information do you need? If a task isn't hard enough for you, should it tell you that?

<hr></blockquote>
For crafting skills, it would be nice if the dialog showed your % chances on the enhancement you're trying to make. It already tells you the % chance of making an item, plus we have the formulas you've given us, so this isn't a leap forward in terms of disclosure, just a leap forward in terms of usability and customer satisfaction. Perhaps you can have a toggle that reads "Confirm enhancements", and the % chance for a particular enhancement is diplayed in that confirmation box. If you just want to burn thru items you can turn the confirmation off - Much like the Maker's Mark toggle works, except with valuable information in it.
For timer or distance-based abilities I'd love to know when, for example, a Chivalry spell wears out, or when a creature I used Peacemake on turns aggressive again either because I left the area or it got tired of the bashing. Or a creature that is Provoked gets distracted by someone running by. We have no way of knowing these things except to watch the outcome, and in the case of Chivalry it's nearly impossible.
As long as we have a toggle to turn off the messages we're not interested in (*cough* "You can't gain more Valor" *cough*) , then please add all the information you possibly can!
<blockquote><hr>

I'm thinking about decoupling stat gain completely from skill gain -- so every 15 minutes, you would just gain a stat point, up to your daily limit. Is that a bad idea?

<hr></blockquote>
I personally don't see anything wrong with it. It's not a big difference from today.

[lokistonecleaver]

how about making the dang skill gains work like they are supposed to and fix that random number generator?

Heres my $0.02 worth...

<blockquote><hr>

- How much should I care about macroing prevention? Should I eliminate 8x8? If skill gain were more predictable and sane, would you even need it?

<hr></blockquote>

A lot. No. Actually no you wouldnt. Personally I feel that getting a gain shouldnt be "a suprise" but it shouldnt take forever either....

<blockquote><hr>

- How long should it reasonably take to GM a skill? Should all skills be the same?

<hr></blockquote>
Depends on the skill. No they shouldn't. Creating say a GM thief shouldn't be as easy as creating a GM warrior type char.

<blockquote><hr>

- For difficulty-based skills, what information do you need? If a task isn't hard enough for you, should it tell you that?

<hr></blockquote>
Great idea there. Best one I've heard in ages. I seem to remember a while back when I was working my tamer that now and then when I'd tame a regular horse for someone (I was high 90's taming or so) I'd get a message from the animal. Something like "that wasnt even challenging".

<blockquote><hr>

- I'm thinking about decoupling stat gain completely from skill gain -- so every 15 minutes, you would just gain a stat point, up to your daily limit. Is that a bad idea?

<hr></blockquote>

not a bad idea at all. With stat locks in place that will work just dandy.

Well there ya have it. You asked for it, you got it! and its not a Toyota! /php-bin/shared/images/icons/biglaugh.gif

Mara The Mad of Crashapeake

[pellaeon99]

The stat gain seems intriguing, but how would you determine where the point was placed?

I also like the idea about notification about not being able to gain in skill. Perhaps (for crafting, anyways) you could include a % skill gain in the % success window.

[Thunderbird]

I'd just like to mention, put an option in the options menu that lets you toggle "That wasn't even easy" for difficulty based skills. Because yes, it makes a lot of sense to know if something was way too easy. If I try to improve my drawing skills by drawing completed circles, I'm going to get nowhere. It would make sense to put in a "You don't stand a chance" line too, for certain tasks where you don't stand a chance of success (barding/taming/ect). I mean, we've already got exact numbers for crafting success, I'm sure that's a small thing to ask.

As for automatically gaining stats every 15 minutes, no. Keep it tied in to skill gain.

How long to gm? Should be based on skills. Some should take a day or two (like armslore I suppose), some should take months (like animal taming).

Do away with 8x8? ahhh, plz don't. If you do though, replace it with a system that actually encourages natural play (if there is such a thing), as opposed to a system that encourages you to stand in one spot with your hiding macro held down. I have no idea what this system is though.

[Divinity_Pac]

Hello. I've been playing this game for almost 5 years, and the skill gaining system no longer fits the game. The skills change so much now, that gains should be much faster. AOS changed many skills, and I'm sure another add-on is coming down the pike that will do the same. Why not make skill gain 2 times faster? 10 times faster... The only reason would be to "force" people to play for a longer period of time, so they would stay longer.

If you are asking our opinion based on what we want, I would think a quicker skill gaining system. After all....we are the same people who didn't want PKers or even the ability to attack other players, right? Therefore we want the easy way out, and that is quick skill gains.

If you are asking our opinion based on what EA wants, than we want a long, tedious, painful skill gain, that will maximize profits for EA and keep us glued to the monitor until our eyes pop out. We want to be compelled to get GM in one skill until you change the rules, and make certain skill obsolete again, so we can stay glued again for months.

In reality, it is all a matter of what you want. This question really makes us all feel like you are concerned with what we really want though. On the subject, we all want to wait 2-3 hours for a GM to tell us, "I'm sorry, there is nothing we can do for you at this time." This is something we love...thanks for "asking" though...

[Aegean]

I am curious to know how the developers feel about this issue.

When you did the AoS revisions, did you assume that certain skills are supposed to have a greater reward than others?

Are players supposed to follow a natural progression of skills as the go from newbie to veteran? In the end, is everyone supposed to be a tamer/bard?

If that is the way it's supposed to be, then those skills should definately take longer, but if the goal is to make all skills equally rewarding, then they should also take an equal amount of time to GM. Could a dev give their thoughts on this?

[Grommit]

Late to the party but I'm just going to say that it'd be nice if the Devs didn't keep on trying to "fix" skill gain and concentrate on adding more content. Every time skill gain gets "fixed" it becomes broken in another way. There's no one system that is perfect for skill gain. Your resources are better spent on other things.

[athlonio]

Crafting skills are fine the way they are, I think.

8x8 should be eliminated. But skill gains should be more predictable during "common play". GGS was an attempt at gains during normal play, but it isn't the answer, IMO. Skill gain during normal play (this does NOT apply to crafters, as I don't think there is an easy way to fit "normal play" with crafters at the moment) should be target based, more than it is now. In other words, raising magery should require casting spells on different beasts. I should gain just by hunting or pvping. And should not gain at all on a boat unless I'm killing serps or something. Each spell cast should do a target check. If you've gained off the target, your chance to gain again should be decreased (still allowing you to gain more than once on a dragon or something big, but not gain multiple times off something weak like an ogre). Your chance to gain off a target to begin with should be tied to the level of spell you used, and maybe even the level of the resist of the target. Casting on yourself or a guildmate over and over should not get you gains.

Warrior skills take a while now a days. Not a bad thing, in my opinion. But I think that some of the logic should change. Similar to the mage gains, it should be target based. Maybe tied to the targets tactics or wrestling skill as well. Gaining off a target reduces the chances of gaining off the same target again. You should not be guaranteed to gain off each target, but instead you should have a CHANCE to gain off each target.

This approach, I believe, promotes normal gameplay better than the current system of GGS.

Specialty skills, such as poisoning, remove trap, locks, etc., are probably fine the way they are, with one exception. Poisoning (and maybe some others too) should have the delay between uses reduced a lot. There is no player advantage given by reducing the timer, other than skill gain. This would make the skill a lot better to raise. It's already quite expensive to raise, but it also takes a long time. The combination of both of these issues is too much for one skill.

As far as how long skills should take... I don't think it should take 6 months of normal play to get to GM for any skill. However, I also don't think any skill should be achievable in a week, either. I've been working my new fencer for weeks now, and he's at 76. I just added Spirit Speak to his template today to start my necro training, and he's at 70+ already (and counting). We know how obnoxiously focus is to raise, too. Some skills are way to easy, and, by comparison, some are way too hard. I think they should probably all be brought closer to the middle. I don't want any of the skills to be too hard, but none should be a cakewalk, either. It would be nice to just play the game (at the lower skill levels) and know that the gains are going to come pretty frequently. If I do this for two months, I should probably be GM in a few of the skills.

I like Siege's approach to skill gain (when it works right, that is) in that there is a time delay between gains, and a limit per day. I think something like that would be nice for some of the easier skills to raise that don't require targets, etc (like focus, med, spirit speak), though a lot of people wouldn't like that on regular shards.

Anyway, there's my two gold pieces to chew on (don't mess up your teeth).

[aarontsung]

-8x8 should definately be removed because it's half of what macroers do. I can't go fishing for 5 minutes without a macroers boat crashing into me! Perhaps UO should subclass the usual macroing programs and cause them to close every 10 seconds or so. It's easier to update the UO client with the autopatcher than it would be for the macroing program creators to update then distribute new versions. They increased cost in bandwidth alone would shut them down /php-bin/shared/images/icons/smile.gif

-A relatively useless skill such as begging should take far less time to GM than say, Taming, which is the most difficult (in my expierence) to get to 120. I liked it more when I first started playing UO... where after 3 months of playing I was at 85 skill and damn proud of it.

-Difficulty based skills are just fine as they are. Take for example alchemy. The minimum required and %chance are displayed for each item. You should know that if you have a 99% chance of making something (I'm talking to you tailoring macroers with your 10000000 oil cloths) you wont be getting good gains.

-The daily limit is an annoyance. I am toying with my necro macer's stats, and when i want to shift from str to dex and int i have to wait 2 or 3 days to test it.

I honestly think that Vet is broken. I have gained 1 point in about 2000 bandages (which spanned about 15 days). I don't even get GGS gains. Without killing my bonded pets and making them gimps, I can't seem to get any gains.

- How much should I care about macroing prevention? Should I eliminate 8x8? If skill gain were more predictable and sane, would you even need it?

Well.. to be honest.. having not played forever i am still under the impression that the reality is that macro prevention has only made it easier to gain skills..

But removing 8x8 would make people stop going on boats to do their unattended thing which would remove the entertainment of seeing a person stuck for hours near a shore saying "one forward" 8 times, cast earth quake "one right" 8 times.. without going anywhere.. its fun to watch at times, a good laugh (of course.. i should report them.. but a good laugh is hard o find)

- How long should it reasonably take to GM a skill? Should all skills be the same?

I think others have really said it.. it shouldnt be the same.. but the way i see it (that is different i guess from anything anyone else would want) it shouldnt be random at all, no dice roll involved. or put another way

There should be a list of how many uses of skills with the easiest applicable thing to do it requires as minimum to gain a skill, then count up for every applicable use.. doing tougher things would give more 'points'..

Skills should then have a multiplier to be applied to the table based on how powerful the skill is in general and how much more generally useful the skill is ( a skill that is a support skill for multiple other skills for example should be somewhat more difficult to gain than the skill would be when examined on its own (anatomy is a good example, in itself its completely useless, however its multplier here would need to be based on the fact that it supports both weaponskills and healing)) Of course some skills need be more easy to gain (for the PvP community) .. but that in reality should mean that their power in PvM need be adjusted down, if people dont want any work then they should not reap the rewards (which is my oppinion on advanced chars and skill jewelry as well)

But i guess i'm just babbling, the problem as i see it is that its too random right now making skill gain dependent on whatever type of flawed die rolls is the flavor of the year.. but i doubt my system (that is truly a sort of an experience point system) wouldnt get a broad following

- For difficulty-based skills, what information do you need? If a task isn't hard enough for you, should it tell you that?

.. personally? the way it barks not even challenging with taming means i wouldnt have known it did if people didnt tell me.. if you want anything of this sort make it a game wizard / codex question that advice you what to do at your current skill level in a given skill

- I'm thinking about decoupling stat gain completely from skill gain -- so every 15 minutes, you would just gain a stat point, up to your daily limit. Is that a bad idea?

If you mean the successful use of a skill gets an independent chance of skill gain and stat gain then it sounds like a good idea..

[Zilor]

If skill gain were more predictable and sane, would you even need it?

I was thinking, and ya know what would be great. Something along the lines of Dungeon Siege, you use items and on every swing you get some experience.

Perhaps make it so you allways get say, 100 xp per sucesfull swing, crafting, casting, etc. Each .1 is a little XP bar, your very first .1 is 25xp, so with one sucesful hit wiht a sword you get .4 swordsmanship. Then as it goes up it takes more and more XP. So rather then have random crap, you have an easilly understood use based system without all the problems of the randomness.

Some balancing would have to be done on whether or not you can get XP from anything or now. Getting XP from a mongbat at 95 doesnt seem right, so some comperative system would have to be put in, i think something like that is in now anyway. Also, past say 80 skill, you should be totally unable to gain an offensive skill off another player.


Also, actually show the XP bars, i know it would freak people out that "Oh no, UO is level based!!!" even though it truely wasnt, it would make it more predictable. Random isnt exactly fun, eing suprised by a skill gain while nice, isnt practical. This way people could work toward a goal when they logged on with actual progress at all times rather then praying for gains.

[Chandalir]

Thats probably the sanest way Ive seen for a suggestion to skillgains so far. Making it experience based (somewhat anyway), so casting spell x would give you xy experience points, and casting spell y would give yz experience points. That way we still have the difficulty based mumbo jumbo we have now, but we can rest assured that we gain within a certain number of actions performed.

Granted, yes, it does promote unattended macroing (specially for current 8x8 skills), but at least it allows you to get gains through "normal" gameplay. You could even make it so performing beneficial acts or hunting in parties gave increased gains (ie, ressing someone would grant you more "skill experience" than casting an energy vortex) to further improve on the social aspects of skill gains.

Of course, if you really wanted to go out on a limb and somewhat prevent unattended macroing, make skill gains in houses/boats require a valid NPC target (for spell casting/weapons gains) and people would have to team up to keep the NPCs healed anyway.

Lots of potential at any rate, and gaining within x amounts of successes would be a hell of an improvement to what it is now. Just wanted to cast my support at that idea.

[Zilor]

I fleshed it all out more here if you or Tact wants to look.


Can't remeber the linky thing, to long away from boards so copy/paste.

http://boards.stratics.com/php-bin/uo/showthreaded.php?Cat=1&amp;Board=uoideas&amp;Number=394998 1&amp;page=&amp;view=&amp;sb=&amp;o=&amp;what2=&amp;selv=&amp;vwhich=

<blockquote><hr>

How much should I care about macroing prevention? Should I eliminate 8x8? If skill gain were more predictable and sane, would you even need it?

<hr></blockquote>
Don't remove 8x8, if skill gains were more predictable and sane, the game would probably get too easy.

<blockquote><hr>

How long should it reasonably take to GM a skill? Should all skills be the same?

<hr></blockquote>
I think it should take about a week or 2 to GM an average skill from 30 if you powergame the skill for a while each day. If you powergame the heck out of it over a weekend, I think you should be able to get to 90 or so. But I still think some skills should take quite a lot longer. Animal Taming and Provocation should be tweaked a bit, but not much. It's nice that they take forever because it keeps you playing the character.

<blockquote><hr>

For difficulty-based skills, what information do you need? If a task isn't hard enough for you, should it tell you that?

<hr></blockquote>
If you mean (for example) taming monbats when you should be taming ridgebacks, yes it would help a bit.

<blockquote><hr>

I'm thinking about decoupling stat gain completely from skill gain -- so every 15 minutes, you would just gain a stat point, up to your daily limit. Is that a bad idea?

<hr></blockquote>
I think this is a GREAT idea. Stats &amp; skills shouldn't have been linked to begin with. Plus it sucks having to unlock wrestling, gain a str point along with .5 wrestling, then dropping the skill again.

[LadyTalia]

Eliminate 8x8? *screams* the mere thought of that sends shivers down my spine. Even though i think in the 3 years that I have Played UO I've only actively 8x8'ed 4 or 5 skills on my roughly 6 or so Characters. 8x8 is a decent training method granted it does leave room for people to do unatteneded macroing but my point why punish everyone for those people.

How long should it take to GM a skill? that is reall difficult to answer. You have your people who all they do from the time they get up till the time they go to bed even those who dont sleep is play UO. Then you have your people who log in once or twice a week for a few hours to hunt or train. Granted it took me nearly 2 1/2 years to GM taming and I've heard of people doing it in 4 weeks. Dont I feel silly *grins*

Difficulity based skills? Honestly I think It should. If your for say working Alchemy or even poisoning which are both "diificulty based skills" Perhaps a message like you get from the stealing or training dummies "You can no longer blah blah"

Decoupling Stat Gain? mmm Maybe. I've heard that Stat gain is really hard, of course I havent really tried this myself, just a few minor modifications to chars here and there. If it is a large complaint, then yes. If it is something most people dont see as really annoying then no.

[Rhadamanthys]

i dont know how others feel but I enjoy the game when i actually play and use my skills and not macroing tinkering, wasting time and ressources.
the removing of powerhour was a disaster. everyone who cannot spend hours and hours in the game every day is not capable to GM i.e. tailoring in a reasonable time before he can use the skill nicely.

if skills would be easy to GM ppl would change their chars much more often. i personally prefer to play with 1 char and i would welcome it if i could change his template every now and then without to result in months of tranining before im finished.

i personally cant see why skills should be hard to train. dungeons are camped by tamers already, provokers everywhere. its already "****ed up". so i dont see any point to bother the new startig ppl just because it used to be easy and has to be harder these days.

if i could change my templates without worries of training sessions i'd have much more fun. especially it could be nice for pvp if you could come out with new templates every week.

- add powerhour again
- let us train tactics/melee skills like we used to. sparring a friend up to gm.
- magic resisting has become a stupid joke to train. nicely ****ed up that.
- dont dare to remove 8x8
- difficulty based skills in general take too long to gm. after gm its waste of time.

[Citern]

<blockquote><hr>

I'm thinking about decoupling stat gain completely from skill gain -- so every 15 minutes, you would just gain a stat point, up to your daily limit. Is that a bad idea?


<hr></blockquote>


i do not know if you ever played ultima VII any version

but i remember the system for statsgain to be with experience points and npc training, and only that way could you gain stats points

now the current way is not very roleplay friendly and what you suggest is even worse !

player logs in, uses a skill, gets a statgain and logs back out

repeat x times a day

my proposal is:

player has to gain x 'experience' points by doing various tasks

skill-based things, like casting spells, shopping wood, mining, name it and it will have a chance to get you some 'experience'

basically just playing the game will (or should) earn you these experience points

once a certain amount of 'experience' is gained,

go to a certain npc and for a small gold fee and maybe even a quest *wink wink* the npc will let you gain stat(s) in the stats that particular npc trains or that player has chosen to gain

ofcourse you can get only so much exp per x timeframe and the same goes for stats..

at least players will have the feeling they have to 'work' for their stats instead of just getting them for free

and the higher stats you have the more difficuly this 'quest' the npc would give you would become...... (certainly above 225 /php-bin/shared/images/icons/cool.gif )

and ideas or comments/flames anyone ?

[KyraMarie]

I know it wont happen but what if?

The chars that have resist would be able to use it the way it worked while the chars that don't have it can still use the new system?

The following is my very personal opinion, not a way to start a discussion.

I hate training the mules skills (smith, tinker, carpenter, tailor and any other Im leaving out} since we have no more PH is even more boring. Since OSI introduced the advance char, can they introduce a way to GM this boring skills for a reasonable price each? It will be more reasonable than buying them from Ebay and it will be a lot more profitable for OSI. This may even help the unattended macroing, and it will give the players the option to PLAY with their main chars or spend their time raising their mule's skills

[Cirianara]

I think the key to this is, "what is normal gameplay?" It's different for everyone.

Personally I'd like to see skill gain tied to number of uses. After X number of uses, you get a gain. "Uses" needs to be looked at though- a blacksmith should be able to get credit for a "use" standing at the town forge making armor and repairing weapons for customers, not just from making 10,000 plate gorgets. A tamer should get "use" credit for successfully commanding their pet to fight different critters. Poisoners should get credit for a "use" for successfully poisoning their opponents, not just for poisoning an apple. A mage should be able to get credit going out with their guildmates and healing them. Etc. etc. etc. There probably needs to be some sort of multiple target / movement part of it to prevent folks from just standing in their house unattended for hours, but if I want to wrestle chickens all the way to GM, SO WHAT?? If there was a set scale, you get a gain after x number of uses, then powergamers would still gain if they put in the time, and casual users would still gain. The problem right now is that with difficulty based skill gains, you HAVE to do something specific to get a gain, you can't "just play". My brother in law just started playing, and it is so frustrating that we have to take him to go hunt skeletons to get a gain, instead of taking him with us to fight orge lords since we can keep him alive, but he just won't gain. I'm redoing a mage and adding archery- I can't tell you how boring it is to suddenly have to hunt great harts to get gains. People will macro as long as they are forced to do boring tasks just for skill gain, and by now it should be apparent that someone will always find a way to circumvent any anti-macro stuff that is put in. I use 8x8 extensively... and I hate it. If I knew I would gain just going out and playing the character, I would never bother with 8x8 again. I miss being able to take my new character out and just building them up while tagging along with some more developed friends who could help me- but the last thing my 5x GM friends want to do is hunt great harts.

I completely disagree with the concept that "more powerful skills should take longer to GM". Today's uber skill is tomorrow's nerf, and the goal should be to balance out the skills, not make them more difficult to train.

How long should it take to GM? Tough call. However, you can't look at it as one skill- the question should be how long to get a character up to 700 skill points. Perhaps the rate of skill gain should be across the whole character in some way. I'm a semi-casual gamer- I get to play 1-2 hours a day during the week, a bit more on the weekend. I would rather spend my time playing then training. If I could get gains filling my BODs as opposed to just making studded gloves, I'd be filling my BODs. Time is hard to estimate- a warrior uses their skills (example swords, tactics, and anat) a lot more fighting 2 monsters then a bard does. I think you should be able to get one character up to master level in all skills within a month with a reasonable amount of play time... most people don't play to gain skill, they get skill so they can PvP, do champ spawns, hunt high level monsters for good loot, etc.

As for stat gain, it is BROKEN! I post-AOS trained a character up to GM mage, 95+ med, and 90+ eval (all from 30 skill) and did not gain ANY stats. The above mentioned brother in law spent hours working magery- running around killing hinds and such, just to learn the game mechanics- and though he gained lots of magery and eval, he had to switch to wrestling and anat to gain any stats. Stats should be linked to skill gain- you get a gain after x number of skill gains- and you should be able to max your stats at about a halfway developed character, or around 350 non-bought skills- with no time cap. There also needs to be a way for skill-maxed characters to tweak their stats- and for that I can see a time delay, you can get a stat change every hour or such even at 700/720 skills. Most stat changes at that level are tweaks, not overhauls. Stat gain should come naturally as you are building your character- a mage shouldn't have to go out mining to get strength, or a warrior use arms lore every 15 minutes to get a little more mana.

Ciri

[KingBlitz]

well in my humble opinion you need to do a few things

1) stop changing the rules all the time. I am TIRED of redoing characters.

2) probably too late but skill jewelry was a bad idea in my opinion

3) rename GGS. there is nothing guaranteed about it. there is no need to fix it as such but the name is confusing a lot of people (i.e. you can't gain after a week if you haven't logged in and used the skill in that week - and please do consider removing that rule from skills that are not checked for gains during regular game play, like taming and poisoning).

4) keep differences between skill gain rates. that way people can build good characters fairly quick while working on a long term project like a tamer or treasure hunter on the side. Melee skill gains need to be much faster.

5) remove 8x8 and "tricks" like anatomy/music/animal lore gain sweetspots. again, raise the general gain rate to compensate.

6) some kind of a written guide to appropiate difficult tasks for all difficulty based skills would be very useful. Don't bother us with that during game play, but give the GMs an www addy that actually helps people with there problem when they page that they are "stuck".

f.ex. at each 10 point skill interval give three monsters to fight (for melee), three monsters to tame (for taming), three monsters to provoke, appropiate spells and paladin abilities etc etc. Don't forget crafting skills and hints on miscellenaous skills like parrying and fishing.

In general i think skill training should be a lot less of an issue. we are playing a game remember? skill gains should be part of the game... like real RPGs... how would you like an D&amp;D master having you "train" before you could adventure?

hmm

you could even consider handing out some skill gain "points" for completing quests, doing t-hunts, killing player enemies (red must kill blue, blue must kill red and of course opposing factions), killing many different types of monsters (no need to reward camping).

that last bit is just in case you can't find a system to have gains become part of regular gameplay. and that is the biggest issue imo.

At first, I thought this thread was a joke. I cancelled my UO account when they announced GGS (and the removal of powerhour) My brother convinced me to give AoS a go, I did. Other than the initial lag spikes and reverts, I'm pretty approving. I think AoS was a positive step in UO's direction.

I then read this thread. It's got to be a joke.
I don't pay money to re-learn how to play the damn game every few months. Period.

The I ran across something, and found out why this thread even exists.
It's an IRC log from the dev/marketing team at OSI!

#----- Snip -------#
&lt;Marketing&gt; Well, our plan to increase revenue by killing powerhour and introducing advanced characters worked for a little while. But purchases are down again. What's the next phase?
&lt;DevGuy&gt; We could do it again? I mean, make it near impossible for them to gain stats/skills, and then raise the price on advanced character templates.
&lt;DevGuy&gt; Actually, now that we've introduced powerscrolls, we could have 2 sets of advanced characters. The basic one (which we currently have) giving 85.0 points in most needed skills, and fewer points in secondary abilities.. AND have the enhanced version. 7xGM! we could even charge like.. $100.00!
&lt;Marketing&gt; I like it. But, we did lose a lot of clients over the GGS/Powerhour thing, will it happen again?
&lt;DevGuy&gt; Nah, we can take precautions!
&lt;Marketing&gt; Such as?
&lt;DevGuy&gt; Well, we already know what we're gonna do. However we can have one of the guys start a thread on Stratics, so the community thinks they had a hand in the design, development, and implementation. That way, even if it doesn't work as expected, we can claim that we gave them what they asked for.
&lt;Marketing&gt; What if the general concensus is "Don't change it"?
&lt;DevGuy&gt; I'm sure at least one person will announce that they like the idea, and we can use that as our green light.
&lt;Marketing&gt; Hrm, I like it. They'll ask for it, then never know what hit em!
&lt;DevGuy&gt; Yup! It's brilliant.
#--------- snip ----------#

Suddenly, it all becomes clear.
You guys are going to suggest changes, they are going to make skill gain impossible, then charge you for your character. Haven't we learned from the past? History repeats itself!

Oh well, I give up. I left once. I'm sure my time here is limited.

-Drk


P.S. the IRC log is fictitious. It does not exist to be libelous or slanderous in any way to any persons or entities living or deceased.

[NunuSpider]

<blockquote><hr>

- How much should I care about macroing prevention? Should I eliminate 8x8? If skill gain were more predictable and sane, would you even need it?

- How long should it reasonably take to GM a skill? Should all skills be the same?

- For difficulty-based skills, what information do you need? If a task isn't hard enough for you, should it tell you that?

- I'm thinking about decoupling stat gain completely from skill gain -- so every 15 minutes, you would just gain a stat point, up to your daily limit. Is that a bad idea?

So, stuff like that. Please feel free to discuss amongst yourselves . . .

<hr></blockquote>

The law and the code are two separate things. The law should be against unattended macroing (of skills), and GM's can police that. But the code shouldn't make gaining unreasonably difficult.

Time to GM: If all skills were balanced, it should take a similar amount of time for all of them. But there are several factors to take into account.
1) How useful the skill is. Magery is arguable the most useful skill in the game, followed by any weapon skill.
2) How powerful the skill is. Animal taming should probably be the single most difficult, because it's overly powerful. You really don't need any skills but taming, animal lore, and magery to make millions of gold in a matter of hours.
3) The cost of training the skill. While skills like battle focus, tactics, and evalint are essentially free, magery can cost several hundred thousand gold (not counting the whole lower reagent cost item fiasco).

A good amount of time is a tough call. Maybe a risk vs. reward system or some idea of what the character is for should make a difference, or hell maybe even account age. I know it took me over a year to GM magery the first time through passive gameplay.. just a whole lot of fighting and adventuring. Some players may get bored if they plateau too soon. But on the other hand, if I knew it were going to take me over a year to GM magery again, I'd just as soon give up. I've put too much time into the game already, so I think a matter of weeks through powergaming is reasonable.

Difficulty/Information: You can never have too much useful information. But in a system that told you a task is too easy for you, there has to be a switch. For example it gets pretty annoying at a champ spawn getting the message:

You cannot gain any more in valor.
You cannot gain any more in valor.
You cannot gain any more in valor.
You cannot gain any more in valor.
You cannot gain any more in valor.

When my expert swordsman has to kill snakes in order to get to the ratmen, I don't want to see:

You are too skilled to gain experience from such an unskilled foe.
You are too skilled to gain experience from such an unskilled foe.
You are too skilled to gain experience from such an unskilled foe.
You are too skilled to gain experience from such an unskilled foe.
You are too skilled to gain experience from such an unskilled foe.

...Or something similar.

No, separating stat and skill gain is not a bad idea. In fact I wouldn't mind a simple daily limit on skill gain rather than GGS. Go out and get my 5 points of fencing and then go do whatever I want for a couple hours, rather than having to spend a long time training or have multiple sessions every day.

[Elise]

Take out the anti-macro code. You'll eliminate 8x8 and the need for it in one swift clean cut.

I'm not a macroer (I can't even get a tailor macro to work! /php-bin/shared/images/icons/smile.gif ), but I really don't see the problem with those who are. Better they're inside their own homes with their script running than out at sea blocking up the fishing lanes. Would it also reduce bandwidth usage? It'd certainly save GM time...

The problem isn't macroing, it's people's reactions to it. Some people see skill gain as a precious thing and a part of playing the game, others see it as a step to actually getting to play the game. Most people will play their first characters from base to GM, but why should they spend this not insignificant amount of time re-learning an already explored skill on another character?

It's about choices. Do it if you want to (without exploiting bugs), don't if you don't.

GM'ing a skill should take as long as you want it to.

For the difficulty based warrior skills, anatomy should be able to give you a rating, taming would be animal lore, mage uses eval int, etc. Bards get a message after they've targetted.

Stat and skill gains need a link to each other. It wouldn't feel right getting a stat gain just sitting on my fat backside watching the world go by (I do that a lot!) Someone said increase the new character stat limit to 150 which is a damn fine idea! Why not give them the full 225 to play with if they choose advanced characters? Give people a choice at character creation to allocate up to the maximum of 225 points. Those who want to work for it can (RP Guilds can lay down max stat for new character rules), and those who don't can concentrate on their skills instead (multi-accounters, vets, pvp'ers).

You've got a hard job. You have a distinguished player-base like no other game. Try not to go down the track of laying restrictions. We get enough of those in real life /php-bin/shared/images/icons/smile.gif Give the playerbase the choice to play the game in the way they get the most out of it, and you're laughing.

Good luck,

Elise

[warchef]

""- How much should I care about macroing prevention? Should I eliminate 8x8? If skill gain were more predictable and sane, would you even need it? ""

macro prevention should be number one on your list.. we should all be able to play the game instead of working the game.. yes it should take work.. but moving 8 tiles forward is not the work it should take.. this invites and other macro programs to become the only way to compete.. 8x8 should be removed.. or if it is not then unattended should be allowed.. make it a lil more dagerous for people to be alone anywhere.. but the damage is done and you guys have no way of telling who is using these programs unless some one rats them out..

""- How long should it reasonably take to GM a skill? Should all skills be the same? ""

i so miss the days of waiting over a year to gm a skill.. now the damage done by power hour jsut ruined the game into not much more then a FPS where we are all on the same playing field.. i have spent 5+ years workign on charachters.. not using 8x8.. and your advance charachters are equal to or slightly below my chars.. this is what i like though.. every point i have worked for.. not sailed while i watch gilligans isalnd.. some skills such as taming and prov shoudl be back to thier long long waits.. but some skills like poisoning are way to slow as it is now..

""For difficulty-based skills, what information do you need? If a task isn't hard enough for you, should it tell you that? ""

i think we should be left in the dark as much as we are now.. this will probably be the best communication forcement that you guys have ever achieved.. "hey i cant gain anat.. what am i doing wrong?"

""I'm thinking about decoupling stat gain completely from skill gain -- so every 15 minutes, you would just gain a stat point, up to your daily limit. Is that a bad idea? ""

works well for me.. i hate that stat gains ever since T2A days.. mass camping parties.. lumberjacking on my mages.. why shoudnt i just spend tiem working skills i need and not skills to raise stats..

[rschae7717]

Mr. Tact,
I am not a real fan of the 120 skills, when i started uo yrs ago it took forever to gm a skill and now we have kids becoming 5x gm's in matter of 2 weeks, where i had spent months upon months accomplishing these goals, i think the stat gain is pretty well the way it is its just the skill gain system that has changed so much from better to worse to better over and over again, it just seems like we never know what to expect anymore, now with the champion spawn and bod system it has led uo even closer to the joked around bout name change to merchant online, I love this game, but lately it seems like my charectors are usless against creaters that i used to be able to kill easily because of these changes, for those of use who like to still have our warriors they have seem to become preety worthless to against alot of creatures, it seems like tamers and bards are now running the entire game, i have been to alot of champ spawns and everytime the majority of people there are the tamers collecting the power scrolls, and blocking other players out using thier pets so they can run to town and sell em for millions leaving most of us out of the loop unless your a major merchant in the game. Also with the new release i have noticed that special items to raise your skill IE: minning gloves no longer give you the +5 minning taking you to 105 minning like they were intially intended for, but there is also no way to raise this skill above 100 besides using them before aos release. Just a insite from an old vet that has been w uo from the beginning. I have had uo accounts since beta, but lost my first 2 accounts when i was deployed overseas on a ship in the navy, which i am still part of and was not able to get online to update my account info when credit card expired so i ended up loosing those hard earned rewards too. But like i said i love this game and have sat through alot of changes and lost millions of gold because of bugs, reverts, and exploits, but i have seen the community split from large groups to individuals no longer working together with people but working to suck the people around them dry in any way possible.

[Moonglum]

Move up the ETA of soulstones. Im so sick of having to rebuild characters constantly. I've been with you guys since 97...gimme a break and let me play a little huh?

[KyraMarie]

Soulstones

Im my case I have 8 accounts, 5 of them active. So It will be great for ppl with mulriple accounts to use the "Soulstones" not only beteewn chard but beteen accounts.

[LetAst]

I'll second Moonglum's comment on Soulstones. Having to retrain isnt a huge problem, using new skills or a new template is interesting, but not if it's at the expense of another skill that's taken u ages to train.

The way things are at the moment, if u drop a 'hard' skill for another more competative one, chances are, two or three months down the line, the game will change again and u need the other skill back, it's a pain in the ass.

So get those soul stones in!

Cheers,
Let.

[Burl]

There's a theme I see in this thread over and over, that I want to strongly disagree with. Many people say that because this is a game, it should be 'fun' and not 'work'. I argue that this is NOT that kind of game, nor should it be. All material wealth and accomplishment in this game is valued according to the amount of 'work' put in to get it. There is no artificial device or system creatable that can magically change this fundamental principle of human endeavors. Anything that is made easy is simply devalued. This is one of the qualities of this game that makes this world believeable, and ultimately, 'fun'. Too many people confuse 'fun' with 'ease'. I see so many people complain about the difficulty of becoming a GM whatever, and then when they get there they complain that being a GM whatever is not so special anymore. We can't have both. The devs have tried to give us both by basing value on blind random luck, but that's just turning out ugly, artificial and frustrating. If you want to have 'fun' in this game, be prepared to 'work'.

[DrDolittle]

Although I agree with some of what you say, I disagree that playing UO should be "work". UO is, after all, a recreational environment that people play for many reasons but "fun" and relaxation are near the top of most people’s lists. The hallmark of a good game is that it has a lot of "fun" things to do. UO has a wealth of fun things to do. Doing these fun things in these good games is, well, fun!

Unfortunately, somewhere along the line, someone decided that building skills in UO should be "work". From the OSI side of the fence, it seemed that they were afraid that if people were able to achieve their skill building goals too quickly the players would get bored and leave the game. That viewpoint is kind of sad, really. It is saying that UO offers nothing beyond a boring, repetitive process spiced only with the Pavlovian joy of a skill gain. I sure don’t feel that way.

Some players felt that, as they had spent many hours building a skill, everyone else should have to do the same. Still others, extreme power-gamers who clamed to be able to build a full featured 7xGM warrior in only two days, argued that skill gain in UO was too easy!

The loud voices of these two player groups reinforced OSI’s predisposition towards "harder" skill gain. Unfortunately, the only thing that OSI could conceive of was to make skill gain even more boring and repetitive than it already was. OSI even decided to turn skill gain into a revenue stream! All this has made the "casual player" an endangered, or at the least frustrated, species and made the game even less "newbe frendly" than it already was.

Bottom line is that, IMHO, building skills should be a "fun" activity in UO regardless of how long it takes. Further, the skill gain system should not literally waste my play-time with a system based on random chance.

[Goldenblack]

Okay. So if everything was too easy, the game would be less rewarding in the end. Fine.

However, there is another human trait which I think everyone, and most crucially the Devs, cannot afford to forget.

That is, to motivate a person to do something which could quite understandably be called repetitive, or even drudgery, the person needs a -fairly- steady diet of small accomplishments. These are rewarding thrills of accomplisment that make one lust for the next one all the more, at the extreme end working a person into a frenzy of wanting to achieve more and more, DEPENDING ON THE FREQUENCY OF THE ACCOMPLISHMENTS.

Sure, you can draw things out a little. I'm sure EA would like nothing better then for our game experience to take as many months as possible, BUT IF YOU MAKE THE ACCOMPLISHMENTS -TOO- FEW AND FAR BETWEEN, EVERYONE GETS HURT IN THE END. WHY INTRODUCE THE ELEMENT OF DISCOURAGEMENT INTO THE GAME? NEW PLAYERS WILL CANCEL FREQUENTLY WITH A SKILL GAIN TOO REDICULOUSLY SLOW. AND THOSE POOR SOULS WITH TYPICAL BUSY LIVES AND JOBS LOSE OUT TREMENDOUSLY OVER THOSE WHO DO NOT QUITE FIT INTO THAT CATEGORY.

Moderately substantial accomplishments should be daily, whenever a person devotes, say, three hours, they should have a moderately substantial accomplishment that goes beyond one or two 0.01 gains. If the game is made so that a person logs in, slaves away for hours doing things for the freaking ten-humpteen-billianth time, and only sees a measly .01 gain for HOURS of work, and still has many, many, many more little .01 gains to make, that is not cool! That is discouraging! I would not play such a game, however I LOVE the game, as it is, now.

The competition and "challenging" aspect of this game should come from who makes the best quality decisions, not who is an insomniac whose lifestyle enables them to throw away an insane amount of quantitative hours into the game. Quality of in-game-decision-making ADDED to experience should make up the competitive element, and NOT SIMPLY WHO HAS MANAGED TO SPEND THE MOST TIME PLAYING OVERALL--WHO IS THE MOST DOGGEDLY DETERMINED TO MAKE IT THROUGH HOURS OF MIND-NUMBING, REDICULOUSLY UNREWARDING IN-GAME WORK. Some people would snort and laugh at the idea of wasting their life at such an unrewarding and manipulative life-devouring thing.

Make The Work Continuously Rewarding. I think the GGS is close to Perfect.

I know that if skill gain were any slower, I would not waste time playing such a rip-off of a mind-numbingly manipulative game, for determined psycho-fanatics with gritted teeth and high endurance only.

And if I, who -loves- this game, thinks this, you can bet a whole SLEW of potential new players, who do NOT post on these boards, feel the same way.

-Goldenblack, who would be extremely unhappy if GGS were dropped in favor of a SLOWWER skill gain system.

P.S. I have respect for you all who have achieved things that many would not try to achieve, due to boredom, frustration, and discouragement, in days of slower skill gain. But I don't think the great hurdles of the game should be boring and discouraging ones--but rather exciting ones, where progress is substantial, and there is near-endless room for progress.

[Goldenblack]

There should NOT be a daily limit on anything. Stats should rise with complimentary skill use, at about the rate they presently do, IMO.

However, put an end to cooks gaining strength and lumberjacks earning intelligence, will ya?

That's a prime example of how things in the game don't bother to make logical sense, sometimes.

-Goldenblack

I agree with Grommit totally.
There are A LOT of great ideas in the Ideas Den and because the Devs don't post in there, a lot of us just think they are ignoring them and letting them slip off the board. But the Devs have "reassured" us that they do read them, still...

[DrDolittle]

<blockquote><hr>

Make The Work Continuously Rewarding. I think the GGS is close to Perfect.

<hr></blockquote>Not a flame, but I 100% disagree with that statement. GGS was the absolute worst thing that they could have done to make the work "continuously rewarding". At the higher levels it is not uncommon to work a skill for several hours and not see a gain. If one had a hour to play UO each evening then why would one choose to spend that hour on the chance that one might get a gain when GGS, allegedly, has one all ready and waiting for you the next day?

UO’s basic skill gain system is a broken bad idea. GGS is another broken and bad idea. Two broken and bad ideas hacked together do not a reasonable gain system make.

[Burl]

The thing is, I don't think what many are asking for is possible. When someone starts a new character, they do so with a certain goal in mind. Anything they do until that goal is realized will seem like drudgery. Killing orcs? Whaaa, I don't want to have to kill *orcs*! I want to kill *dragons*! The thing is, if you could kill dragons after a week of casual play they would *become* exactly like orcs. You would be saying 'ok, what's next?'.

Nobody *has* to stand in one place and do something over and over, we do it because all we care about is that origional goal that we had set, and we want to achieve it as quickly as possible. You can talk all you want about how that's not fun but here we are!

I often see people with fully developed characters who never see the light of day unless their services are needed to gather resources for some other 'developing' character. I find that funny, it's like, why are you training a tamer when you have a fully functional bard who owns every monster in the game?

I do agree with you that GGS is a good thing. It is a big psychological boost to get see at least some babysteps. I suppose that there may be some psychological tricks that may be used to make the experience more enjoyable, but it has nothing to do with development speed.
<blockquote><hr>

I know that if skill gain were any slower, I would not waste time playing such a rip-off of a mind-numbingly manipulative game, for determined psycho-fanatics with gritted teeth and high endurance only.


<hr></blockquote>
How slow is it? What is the unit of measurement? If it were slower, what would the consequences be? Would it simply change your in game goals? Maybe being a skill 75 swordsmen would be a real acheivement? Why is killing orcs less fun than killing dragons? Could it be because nearly anyone can kill an orc? I believe if you change the 'speed' at which characters develop, other aspects move in to exactly compensate, because we have no ruler to measure our accomplishments except that which we see other players do. The problem with speeding things up is that it makes everyone the same, which does take away any possibility of feeling that you've acheived something, and a great deal of the fun is taken away. This was very noticible during the days of power hour, and that's why power hour needed to be removed.

Anything worth doing is drudgery, it the very source of why this game is fun and why we play. I've played this game for years and I've hated every second of it. /php-bin/shared/images/icons/smile.gif

[Discordia_EU]

I only read about half the replies, so excuse me if i missed anything or repeat anything that already has been suggested.

"- How much should I care about macroing prevention? Should I eliminate 8x8? If skill gain were more predictable and sane, would you even need it? "

I don't have problems with people macroing skills, as long as they don't hurt others with it. You SHOULD do something to prevent unattended macroing, maybe introduce more attractive skill gaining methods(like quests) to make it less tempting.
Should you eliminate 8x8? Dunno, never really used it. Best solution would be an enjoyable skill gain method that makes 8x8 unattractive. Funny thing that anti-macro-code is responsible for the most effective, most used skill-gain-method /php-bin/shared/images/icons/wink.gif

"- How long should it reasonably take to GM a skill? Should all skills be the same? "

No way! Some skills are more rewarding than others.. i think the gain rates are ok as they are now... except for a few pretty useless skills.

"- For difficulty-based skills, what information do you need? If a task isn't hard enough for you, should it tell you that? "
Maybe the character should say something like "too easy" if (s)he can't gain from an action... but include an option to turn it off to avoid people complaining about spamming /php-bin/shared/images/icons/wink.gif For warrior skills i think there shouldn't be monsters that are too hard too gain from (too easy is ok though). If a new player is brave(dumb /php-bin/shared/images/icons/wink.gif) enough to hit a balron he goddamn well deserves a little chance to gain before his dirt nap *grins* Try to train a pet with about 0 tactics and you will know how frustrating this limit can be.

"- I'm thinking about decoupling stat gain completely from skill gain -- so every 15 minutes, you would just gain a stat point, up to your daily limit. Is that a bad idea? "

Hm... maybe, maybe not... really not sure about it. A more exciting stat-gain method would be nice /php-bin/shared/images/icons/wink.gif

I read through the first 4 pages of this thread and have to leave now. So i don't know if someone else refered back to the post of DrDolittle on page 3 which is in my opinion by far the best proposal ever made.

<blockquote><hr>

In a use based system, one would accumulate a lower level "skill-credit" each time one used a skill. Once sufficient skill-credits were available, one would get a gain.

<hr></blockquote>

I completely support this "Work vs. Reward" Modell and hope it will not get lost in the many posts to this topic. Anyone who have not read it (and especialy Mr. Tact *smiles*) should look it up.

I would be more than glad if this would be implemented into UO.
Nothing more to add.
Kajethan

[jcesare]

I think one thing overlooked in this thread is that there have been major changes to skills but the cap has remained static. Power Scrolls eliminated the 7xGm and raised the indiviual skill cap. AoS created a bunch of new skills and nerfed others. Most skills are coupled so it becomes very difficult to try new things on an established character without taking drastic measure. For example Magery and EI and Med, Weapon Skill and Tactics and Anatomy, Music and Provoking and Discord and Peace, Animal Taming and Lore and Vet. This leaves very little room to try anything new without screwing up your template. Some skills have been redone and are of dubious value (Magic resist, Arms Lore) but people who have spent lots of time and effort to GM them are reluctant to drop them especially when the devs say they are "looking at making changes in the future." This basicly handicaps veteran players who have full templates. The "soulstone" concept needs to be looked into. There should be some way to "archive" skills and place them on a "holding" character. Maybe the vet reward cap needs to be doubled or the entire cap raised by 100. Im not sure what the solution is but I think a dialog on the subject is needed.

[KyraMarie]

Amen, I want to log and PLAY not to log and have to spent hrs a day building skills, I want an easier way to hain skill so it takes less time and gives me more time to PLAY and USE those skills the little time I have to play.

If I have only 1 hour of play time (due to rl responsabilities) I want to PLAY that hour, that will ne enough reward for me. All the "hard work" is a thing of the past with the jewerly. So for a lot of ppl than DON'T like that system, I'll ask for an easier way to raise skills.

Because of the long time training mules chars I closed 3 of my 8 accounts. And it will get worse for me is something is not done

[Xanthri2002]

Dear Mr Tact,

I recently saw your post concerning stat and skill gain and figured for once it was time to put some input to a game I have loved over the years(but have recently given up)

First as someone who programs myself, I tend to find most of the loopholes in the training programs not because I try desparately to break the rules, just because I see those types of things(call it active testing) I can tell you that I have GM's every skill apart from begging, herding, ETC and hav gone completely legendary from scratch in them also. I for a time period would buy a blank account build it up until it had 4-5 5-6X GM or a couple of 7X and then resold to pay for my UO habit.
- I can tell you IMHO that skill gain is too EASY way too easy.
- Skill points should be based on character age, NOT ACCOUNT age.(I know this would be difficult but if chars got increase for how old the char was it would make the game more interesting. forcing ppl to recreate chars rather than make a new one in a few days.(Why should someone who has played for years have the same skill cap as someone who just started.)

-as far as imbalances go this is reasonable since trammel and Malas would protect those ppl from a char becoming too powerful in PvP...

- First things first DO AWAY WITH 8 X 8....It makes life and skill gain WAY too easy. Reward persistance but with that said GMing a char should mean something. I remember when I first started the game it took me 2 months of constant fishing to GM fishing and most ppl told me that was record timing.

Stat gain....Go back to allowing see saw method. or even better just let ppl distribute the 225 when making the char....everyone should have equal str and the real advantages to any char should be in the skills they obtain.

-Skills are becoming SO bad nerfed it is taking a lot of the fun out of the game. Can't hardly use magery without eval....that is NUTS. yes I agree that gm eval should make a mage more powerful but when I have a gm mage without eval casting FS for next to zero damage and not being able to use str agility cunning bless spells....ridiculous.

- Macroers continue to ruin the game. All Shards should go to some form of Siege Perilous ruleset when it comes to skill gain. Maybe not as much or limit the total amount of gainper day. something has to be done.

I hate for ti to take a long time to get GM but I can tell you I was more satisfied with reaching 85 with my tamer than I was 120ing eval magery necro ETC....

Taming is too damn hard LOL only skill that is still really a bitch to gain in...that and resist(though there are still tricks).

so your stat gain idea is good but why not just let ppl distribute the points and if they change their mind then they just need to manipulate arrows.

I have been rambling but I can tell you I can GM any skill but nox, scribe and taming within a day or 2. magery now takes about 8 hours from zero to GM.....if you want the secrets you can email me at home at Xanthri@cox.net....since I am leaving anyway I can drop a few bombs and hopefully if I ever come back the game will be better.

one reason I say limit skill gain is this. I am someone who cannot play 24/7 like some...I never macro unattended...why should I not be able to gain the same as someone who macros or scripts all day? then if you make char age mean more skill points you could start a char at a lower limit say 620 then give him 5 pts a month - at 12 months 680 would be limit then change it to 5 every 3 months meaning a two years char would get 700 then 5 pts per 4 months 3 years 715 and then 5pts evey 6 months for the rest of the time the char is on an account.

Yes PPL would bitch. or you could but if skill gain was somewhat limited who cares. You would revitalize the UO ebay account buying and selling and probably bring a lot more ppl back in the long term.

[Xanthri2002]

Faster skill gains???? Are you ppl NUTS. Most ppl in their replies are talking about faster gains. if you want faster gains go to testcenter and have a blast.

Some common themes -

Raise the skill cap - ABSOLUTELY but base it on Character age not account age.

Make lower Skills MEAN something - this is a SUPER idea I saw a few times wouldn't it be nice to have a 75 swords guy and be proud of them? of course with AoS changes this may be impossible....crap I have dided more since AoS came out then playing the 4 years prior....fighting orcs can be hard now LOL

Do Away with MACROERS once and for all....forget all the anti macro code scrap it throw it away. make a daily skill cap based on how high you are. Then make it where you can get your skill cap relatively easy(say 1-2 hours)

Stats are broken - Damn Right. I say let everyone distribute the 225 when char is made - hell combat is hard enough without having to choose between 60 str and 40 so you can have some mana.... Screw that.


Forget about skill difficulty - stratics gives this info for free why right more code that will further slow down the game

GM skill - 3-4 months. why so long? it should mean something to be GM. of course with that said lower skills need to mean something more. at 70 you get special moves(why not make a series of special abilities that you get as you gain)

Make all gains the same - hell ya....unless you want to say because taming is harder, a tamer is a better char than a warrior. I always hated how weak warriors were in PvM....pally helps...everywhere you go EXCEPT UO a beginning mage is weak and a GM would be strong and a warrior is strong when young and not as strong as mage(depends on how you work it but with that said GM Mage should be a lot harder and right now it is the exact opposite.

again enough rambling....

[Goldenblack]

Dolittle's proposed system has the virtue of rewarding (and not penalizing!) casual players, while still allowing gains for power-gamers, albeit at a lesser rate of skill gain (from what I understand).

I think its a good idea. A person does get worn out and tired the more they do something, and is likely to learn less than they did at the beginning of the day, so it's even realistic in a way. It's kind of like powerhour, but it reduces the absolute scrambling (a very unrealistic element), and is more open and lenient than the very short timespan of one hour. If I've understood it correctly.

-Goldenblack

[Goldenblack]

Maledicta raises the good point, which I hadn't thought of, that if people were told a thing is too easy, it is a mickey-mouse indicator of exactly what they should be doing/fighting/taming and what they should not. It herds players, instead of allowing them to do what they want (rp, explore, enjoy figuring our where all the gains are themselves, interact with and ask others for help on gaining), it DISCOURAGES that sort of exploration, interaction, and puzzle-solving. So I guess, such a warning is not such a good idea, now that I think about it.

Maledicta also indicates that skill gain should, as much as is feasibly possible, without taking away from the fun factor, imitate real life, and I think that should be the core of any skill gain system. Screw 8X8. Screw powerhour. Allow people to stand still and do skill gains repetitively, but as per Dolittle's idea, have the rate of skill increase lower and lower, over the course of the day.

-Goldenblack

[Goldenblack]

MerlynDavis raises the excellent point that artificial measures shouldn't ideally be needed to GM a skill.

I don't want to secretly have to fight dragons in only my underwear, using a dagger that is mostly broken, continuously changing the direction I am facing, while dancing, reciting the secret mantra of impossible swordsmanship gain, and occasionally moving 8 tiles, in order to eventually feel that I have mastered swordsmanship. What if I choose not to visit stratics, and learn all these silly little secrets on how to actually GM a skill? I realize things aren't so hard now with GGS (I think, I'm a new player, so correct me if I'm wrong), but honestly.

Thou must needs be careful that thou dost not implement difficulty based skill systems that require secret measures, that a player mayst not reasonably be expected to discover on their own (such as wearing ringmail while sneaking--a person would have to look that up to discover it; they're unlikely to through normal experimental gameplay).

-Goldenblack

[Goldenblack]

That's kind of a cool idea, Barakka, but it is too unrealistic (a person should gain skills no matter if they've passed a quest or ceremony or not), and it does limit freedom to strengthen at a certain critical point.

-Goldenblack

[Goldenblack]

There was a major typo in my post.

[i] I meant to say that players who stand around doing insane repetitive stuff should -NOT- be penalized. (I forgot the word not)

-Goldenblack

[Goldenblack]

Given that many players believe that no matter how involved macro-prevention programming may be, hackers will always be able to circumvent it, here is my request:

It is annoying to have to wait 5 seconds doing nothing before I can try another skill. For instance, I cannot hide, and then track; or heal, and then track, to see what that noise was (some player's lich statuette).

I attempt to hide. I fail. I am not allowed to track for an agonizing period of time. I cannot heal either until I artificially wait 5 seconds or whatever.

It is just that waiting isn't any fun. If a person is good enough to successfully perform a skill, they shouldn't have to continuously wait 5 seconds before doing ANYTHING else, besides walking, or staring at the grass, and thinking about RL, and that maybe they shouldn't be wasting their time on a game that wastes THEIR time.

Anyone agree? Don't you all find yourselves staring at an annoying stream of "You must wait a few moments before attempting another skill" messages, EVEN when you are just trying to play the game normally, and are not intent on macroing, or powergaming, or rapid skill gain?

-Goldenblack

[Goldenblack]

::laughing::

I think Douglatz's post about Macro-Prevention is an extremely good idea (the alchemist poisoning himself, or accidentally making a lit explosion potion, etc.)

-Goldenblack

Is there any way I can buy just 5 days of game play?

Seeing how often I log in anymore, that should be more than enough...

[Goldenblack]

Zardo put it perfectly:

"My opinion is it should be easy to get a skill up to a useable/fun level, but if you want to GM it it would take a long time."

-Goldenblack

[Goldenblack]

Re: Steffrupp
Agreed.
100 hours ABSOLUTE MAXIMUM for GMing, and it is -quite- possible that a lower timeframe would be much more ideal. Maybe it should depend on the skill. However, more than 100 hours is insanity, so please don't.

-Goldenblack

[Goldenblack]

Sorry, Donal but whenever I see a little coloured message in the corner of the screen, I get a giddy little thrill of achievement, and it encourages me to keep at what I'm doing. That's why I DO NOT think stat gains should be decoupled from skill gains--stat gains add to the thrill of acheivement.

I apologise for being overdramatic, but:

MY GOD HOW F*ING DISCOURAGING IT WOULD BE CRAFTING, FIGHTING, ETC. IF IT SEEMED LIKE I WAS MAKING NO GAINS OVER SUCH LONG PERIODS OF TIME.

The messages in the corner of the screen at least let you know: "Keep at it! You ARE improving, even if it doesn't seem like it! You are one step closer to supremacy!!!"

I think the game would be far less fun / palatable without those little messages.

-Goldenblack

[Goldenblack]

Burl, you have said the game should not be too easy; it should be work to be valued.

I think it would be truer to say that DIFFICULTY CAN INCREASE BOTH THE FUN AND THE REWARDING ELEMENTS OF THE GAME, IF ITS NOT TOO OVERBOARD OR IMPOSSIBLE, BUT BORING-NESS/LACK-OF-VARIETY IS DETRIMENTAL TO FUN, TO PLAYERS, AND TO THE GAME AS A WHOLE.

In other words, Yes! I believe the game should be -fairly- difficult, in order to be fun and rewarding. No! I don't believe that it should be too easy. BUT NO! THE GAME SHOULD NOT FOCUS ON THE REPETITIVE, UNREWARDING ELEMENTS. The difficulty of the game should largely be in funner sectors, than in the sheer quantitative endurance of repeatedly doing something for days (especially if there is little death-risk in that repeated task). The only way to make such an activity standable (yes, I like to invent words) is to reward the player with rapid gains/thrills-of-achievement-in-the-form-of-coloured-gain-messages. However, I have heard that gains are very slow in the upper ends, and one rarely sees those messages, and a person should not be forced to dwell in that sector of the game for months, because, well, that just sucks.

-Goldenblack

[Goldenblack]

I stand corrected, DrDolittle (about GGS).

I am a fairly new (and fairly casual) player, and my highest skill is at 83.

I didn't quite realize that GGS became so slow in the upper ends.

Thanks for enlightening me.

::Nods in respect::

-Goldenblack

[Goldenblack]

All I know, Burl:

...is that I love cooking but I could not stand it if it had gained any slower.
...is that I think it's a rewarding and challenging puzzle to solve, figuring out what monsters you can handle and what monsters increase your skills, and where those spawns are, and what areas to avoid. The present system encourages tackling a certain small number of monsters that you can handle, before moving on to the next group. I think the game forced me to spend just the perfect right amount of time fighting skeletons, then fighting wolves, then fighting bears, lizardmen, etc., BUT I would not have been able to stand it if it took any slower to move on to the next group of monsters.

I don't want to fight wolves for four weeks straight, waiting to move up to bears, while I still run screaming from every random harpy.

I don't think any New Player's goals in the game is to be able to kill bears. When we hear about all these cool new monsters and we hear about dungeons, is it realistic to expect us to lower our goals to never being able to touch a dungeon or non-skeleton-monster for weeks and weeks of discouraging gameplay?

My maximum skill is 83, to date all of my experiences with UO indicate that the skill gain is perfect, but COULD NOT STAND TO BE ANY SLOWER. I would not mind quicker skill gain than the present system, but the advantage of the present 'about-as-slow-as-it-could-get-while-still-being-fun-for-new-players (as I see it) system are: (1) Achievements mean more, as you said. And (2) EA makes more money. And (3) I have an amazing stress-relieving thing to enjoy doing, that I won't use up within a month.

But I could not stand it any slower. It is exactly the slowest it can get while still being fun, IMO. However, I will see how it is gaining beyond 83. Maybe I'll come to believe that skill gain becomes too slow. We'll see.

-Goldenblack

[Goldenblack]

"Make lower Skills MEAN something
- this is a SUPER idea I saw a few times wouldn't it be nice to have a 75 swords guy and be proud of them? of course with AoS changes this may be impossible....crap I have dided more since AoS came out then playing the 4 years prior....fighting orcs can be hard now LOL "

You said it.

-Goldenblack

[Liena_of_LS]

Don't forget to factor pet skill gains as well. Since AOS it's almost impossible to get a pet to gain in meditation.


Some skills SHOULD take longer to gain in, BUT ONLY if the after GM'g abilities are higher.
Since AOS 7 day wonder warriors and paladin/necro unattended macroing freaks rule the world for ability to kill things. Not like before when tamers ruled AFTER TAKING 1 yr or more to GM the skills.

The balancing this way was totally ruined with AOS.

While you're rebalancing the stat/skill gains, PUT SOMEONE ELSE ON rebalancing the relative strengths of the character templates you guys messed up royally. Don't screw over the classes who HAVE ALREADY put in over a year to get a working character by making your 7 day wonder warriors as strong or stronger. I can't count the number of midlevel warrior types who have taken over the areas that used to be doable ONLY in groups by warriors, but ok for solo work for tamers or mages. BOTH classes who had to WORK for their GM'ships and are now getting screwed.

Think armed forces here. Infantry has it's uses, but can't take out jet planes and really have to work in teams to take out tanks. Jet planes however, take longer and higher grades/intelligence to be able to fly them, and can pretty much level the playing field. Tank drivers also have to have higher scores than your infantry, and can do a bit more.

Warriors ARE infantry
mages/bards ARE tank drivers and such
TAMERS are air force.

Each takes longer to learn, and the abilities are greater, much like in real life where that college degree actually means something if you want the better paying jobs.

If all classes have the same chances with all the monsters, why bother taking 10 times longer or more to GM a skill like bards or mages or tamers.

Solo warriors should NOT be able to take out a dragon or ogre lord without having it take a RL 30 minutes and LOTS of running to heal.

IF it were me, I'd base the ability to solo a monster on the monster's fame AND put in a better way for all in a party to GAIN fame for grouping to kill the monsters. THAT is your biggest problem for your warriors wanting to be able to solo the monsters, that and sharing the loot. I'd have monsters being killed solo drop normal loot, and those being killed by someone in a group (where ALL of the group are there and have done damage to it) drop loot accordingly so that the ADVANTAGE of soloing a monster goes away.

IE: if one person/pet solos a monster it drops normal loot, but if a group of 3 take it on and all three do damage it drops 3 times the loot. SAME for fame.

And, any player hitting the monster while NOT in the group would get no looting, nor increase the loot dropped.

IF while grouped, the monsters gave the (put number in group here) times normal fame (even putting in a factoring system where that fame was more if the group was NOT all gm's and less if it were), and the group leader got like 20% of that total fame for BEING the group leader, then the remaining 80% of the fame was divided evenly over the (put number in group here) players, it would also promote higher level players leading groups of lower level, and not as aware of the dungeon areas, in to fight the monsters. (This could also be done with the TRAVEL POINTS ie: 8x8 for gaining better ability to gain in the skills)

This would promote grouping, cut down on the kill stealers for they wouldn't have looting rights UNLESS they were grouped with the first person to hit the monster, and make it easier for fame hunters to get it EVEN with the fixes to make infantry less effective to solo the bigger monsters unless in a group.

MY TWO CENTS

All skills are different, and some should be a little harder to raise than others. Barding, Taming, Magery, etc... That said I already believe they are fairly difficult to raise. Crafting skills, those make no difference to me, seems these days everyone has atleast one on their accounts, changing skill gains on them now will only effect new players, who are already coming into a game, where they're at an disadvantage. Vets, have game experience, nifty rewards, and more skill points to work with, and a good portion gained skills during powerhour days. To go around and start tweaking and making skills harder to gain in, is a terrible idea.

If anything warrior skills as they are now just be made a little easier, not saying it should go back to gming those skills in a few hours off an npc. But do something, I just recently started a new paladin on a new account, and can't believe how incredibly lame raising those skills are now.

Also why is there a cap on stats per day? If you wanted to cut back on see sawing, just make it so you can only gain one every 10-15 minutes, thru using skills, but don't limit them. I could play an entire day on saturday or sunday trying to build my character, but after the first few hours I gain no more stats... Lame....

8x8, macroing, etc... I could care less if people use these tactics, they play the game the way they see fit, I play it the way I see fit. The code was to move every 8 spaces to gain, and people figured away to continue their macros, you change it again, they'll find away. Nothing is ever fool proof, and I'm not bothered by it. I'm sure at some point in time everyone will find themselves on a boat doing one or the other, or both. If I had any say, I'd want powerhour back, I hate ggs. I want to come into the game build up my characters, most are built already these days, but even on the new account, I want to train and build the character. Then go play him... Faster his skills are raised, the more use and fun I'll get out of playing the character.

[Liena_of_LS]

[quote[
I think one thing overlooked in this thread is that there have been major changes to skills but the cap has remained static. Power Scrolls eliminated the 7xGm and raised the indiviual skill cap. AoS created a bunch of new skills and nerfed others. Most skills are coupled so it becomes very difficult to try new things on an established character without taking drastic measure. For example Magery and EI and Med, Weapon Skill and Tactics and Anatomy, Music and Provoking and Discord and Peace, Animal Taming and Lore and Vet. This leaves very little room to try anything new without screwing up your template. Some skills have been redone and are of dubious value (Magic resist, Arms Lore) but people who have spent lots of time and effort to GM them are reluctant to drop them especially when the devs say they are "looking at making changes in the future." This basicly handicaps veteran players who have full templates. The "soulstone" concept needs to be looked into. There should be some way to "archive" skills and place them on a "holding" character. Maybe the vet reward cap needs to be doubled or the entire cap raised by 100. Im not sure what the solution is but I think a dialog on the subject is needed.

<hr></blockquote>

UMMM no, the cap has NOT remained static, it in fact LOWERED with the change to using show real rather than the modified for str/dex/int. IT LOWERED by approximately 350 points PER CHARACTER. Admittedly not all these points were fully utilized, BUT a goodly number of them WERE in fact in use, especially for those who had NOT yet gm'd the skills effected. Modified skill WAS what was used to determine the minimum levels you could do things at, and those minimum levels were NOT changed with the switch over to show real. This in effect made use of the skills take a higher level of skill that the skills NOW take at the modified minimum skill needed levels requiring show real values.

IE: making savage paint, which took 80 MODIFIED and about 68.3 show real, now takes 80 show real. Quite a significant change. Mares that tamed at 95.1 modified and about 93.5 show real, now take 95.1 show real. Pet bonding for anything more than a normal riding horse/beetle/llama BROKE for many who had the taming needed to bond the pet using modified values and lower show reals when the system was changed to requiring show reals on what USED to be modified values for the skill for required skill.

THIS was NOT a good change.

[jcesare]

Good point. With so many things screwed up I forgot that I can't make savage paint anymore unless I throw 12 more points into a worthless skill like cooking. I guess the devs thought that magic skill items would fill the gap. Unfortunately there are no +12 cooking rings or bracelets.
All the more reasonto increase the cap.

[mutau]

I personally love 8x8 and think that it is a great way to work on a skill. I think that it is a great way for all players (young and vet) to gain in their skill.
As for the difficulty-based skill, I feel that it would be a great help (for those working on the skill for the first time) if they had some help towards what they should work with to help further their gains. How many times have I seen someone at Brit Bank or the northern smithy shop asking for what they should be working on to get them to that next level.
Decoupling stat gain from skill gain -- bad, bad idea. hehehe

[Burl]

<blockquote><hr>

Burl, you have said the game should not be too easy; it should be work to be valued.

<hr></blockquote>

Let me clarify, it *is* work that is valued, and there's no 'should be' about it. It's not some design aspect that can be changed in any way. All of the 'fun' things in this game have next to no value. There's a very good reason why valorite ingots are 100 gp per ingot, because people hate to mine!

Also, I want to say that I support any game system where work=reward. The only way around that is to make things random, like skill gain, and randomness is frustrating and unfair, unless it is used only where one might expect randomness.

[Cymeraen]

I have to agree, a 75 skill, an 85, or a 90 should enable you to travel the lands without jumping at the sight of every spawn you come across.

The lower your skill, the greater your caution, no doubt, but you should not need to GM skills in order to play at a competitive and fun level.

[Cymeraen]

Liena is right about stat mods, I used to be able to light a fire with any character after a few attempts, roll out the blankie and log. Now I need ot devote skills to that if I want to insta log anyplace other than in town.

Most skills should have a basic stat modifier, so that even a novice could succeed some of the time: Hiding, Item ID, Arms Lore, Fishing, Cooking, Tailoring, Mining, LJ, Resist Spells... these are some skills that it seems a modicum of str, int, and/or dex (or luck in the case of Resist /php-bin/shared/images/icons/smile.gif ) should give a character with no real training at least a modest chance (10-20 skill at 0 real) of accomplishing rudimentary tasks. Because of the difficulty scaling, even a 20 skill is practically worthless for most skills except to perform a few basic tasks, like cook up some fish or light a camp fire. By removing stat modifiers, all the minor tasks that we were able to perform before are now out of many of our grasps.

With the further addition of skills and the increased interdependance of skills, the need for more skill points is greater now than ever before, but yet we find ourselves with fewer 'modified' points to distribute. This needs to be corrected. Either give us 300 real points to compensate (not prefered) or give us back stat modifiers, and while you are at it, increase the number of skills that benefit from them.

[Lord_Shadow]

We for some of us it's too late to save magic resist, we've droped it. OSI made some heavy changes with AOS, changes that destroyed some peoples characters. In my case I had GM resist, but i was dieing everywhere ( i meen come on getting zapped by a reaper lol ) and I had to make a really tough desision just to be able to somewhat get out and still play my main character, and a 4+ year old character at that. I had worked long and hard to GM resist. Just so that I could go and take on the tougher aspects of game play, and it was a real pain getting there! I remember how great it was to finally see that last .1 in resist hit and go WHOO HOO!! and for anyone that has gmed resist without some sort of speed macroing but by just regular game play I'm sure they'll agree you realy felt like you had accomplished something.

Then first day of AOS lol i run outside to clean up my yard of a pesky reaper and poof! i'm dead lol! I thought this is just great no more hunting at the temple on fire island lol and totally forget the new dungeon doom lol from what i hear it's not for warriors anyway :-)

[Lord_Shadow]

Well for some of us it's too late to save magic resist, we've droped it. OSI made some heavy changes with AOS, changes that destroyed some peoples characters. In my case I had GM resist, but i was dieing everywhere ( i meen come on getting zapped by a reaper lol ) and I had to make a really tough desision just to be able to somewhat get out and still play my main character, and a 4+ year old character at that. I had worked long and hard to GM resist. Just so that I could go and take on the tougher aspects of game play, and it was a real pain getting there! I remember how great it was to finally see that last .1 in resist hit and go WHOO HOO!! and for anyone that has gmed resist without some sort of speed macroing but by just regular game play I'm sure they'll agree you realy felt like you had accomplished something.

Then first day of AOS lol i run outside to clean up my yard of a pesky reaper and poof! i'm dead lol! I thought this is just great no more hunting at the temple on fire island lol and totally forget the new dungeon doom lol from what i hear it's not for warriors anyway :-)

[Parfox]

- How much should I care about macroing prevention? Should I eliminate 8x8? If skill gain were more predictable and sane, would you even need it?
With as many boats on the water, unattended macro'n I think is decreasing, as well as the server line stoppers... I have raised many skills in this manner and have watched the screen pretty much most all the time, trips to the resting rooms and to grab a quick bite are pretty much the unattended times, which I don't consider those to be unattended, considering the time to log off and back on...
- How long should it reasonably take to GM a skill? Should all skills be the same?
My humble opinion mind ya... 2-6 months depending on the skill, and yes should be big differences between skills... Magic resist (sore spot from pub17) should take a year as it pretty much does now, without using other methods to raise... I battled Reapers to get where I am now and been working on and off with it for 2 years, and it's rewards should be highfor that skill... Crafting should be fairly fast into the 70's, so new players can make money to support their warriors and magi when it's time to start them... Magery and most fighting skills should go fast into the 70's... maybe a month to get into the 70's... Reason behind this... PUNKS... our hunting spots are full of punks...ninja looters and karma thieves... no time to get there means less devotion, dedication and respect... a month of playing will help with respect I think... Taming is a skill I've worked on for a year and a half... I like it tough, but bonuses should be given for going after the high level tames... to many BULL Tamer GM's in game... When I'm taming a dragon at 95, and a mare at 96, those should give double bonuses over bulls who don't fight back, let Bulls and non fighting creatures take you to drake level... then raise the skill from there using the animals your should be taming... and allow the pets to be as they should be... a bulldog trained for fighting will 90% of the time take another bulldog down quickly... same should be in game... and stat loss, as much when the pet dies... make that the same of EVERYTHING/EVERYBODY in game... and see how many folks start showing respect and gangability (new word?)
- For difficulty-based skills, what information do you need? If a task isn't hard enough for you, should it tell you that?
This would apply and would be good, save one thing... GGS... GGS has gave me skill from taming a bird in the 90's... after I rested the char a few days... message it? nah... let folks hunt thru the players guides and Stratics here for info...
- I'm thinking about decoupling stat gain completely from skill gain -- so every 15 minutes, you would just gain a stat point, up to your daily limit. Is that a bad idea?
It would be nice to have your stats change just by walking around... and when a char gets closer to 7x GM... it's a bear to change stats at that time... drop a gm skill to raise a stat... would be nice if it were seperate from the skill...
Anyways... here are my thoughts on your questions, and being this far down... hope you take time to consider these thoughts... plus... I'd like to have in game voting on players... if a person gets voted a punk by a set number of different folks... 7 days (playing time not just 7 days, kinda like murder counts take 40 hours of play time to rid yourself of) travels in Fel as their reward for their punkiness (another new word?)... lol Law &amp; Order (not the TV show) in Tram is very much needed...

[Dobby!]

- macroing is fine as long as the person is there..afk macroing isnt..8x8 has been around for a very long time.. many people used it and removing it would only make it harder on new players but if skill gain were more predictable/sane i spose it might work

- all skills should NOT be the same..i take LOTS of pride in GMing+ the TOUGH skills.. such as taming, like said in another post its kinda risk vs reward.. or more of a time investment into reward..warriors take the least amount of time to work up and they cant really do the best mobs effectively / tamers take the most amount of time to work up and can slaughter just about anything:) .. but this was before aos.. now with aos i really dont see the difference here..i mean what the hell was the point to spend a year to gm+ taming if i coulda made a paladin and/or warrior and be doing the same hting and spend less than a month to train up.. point here is the time investment compared to the reward is way out of balance.

- this i think is fine.. i mean anyone could put a little effort in and read a web page for advice/tactics/info on what to do/where to gain skills/etc

- nope! not a bad idea

[Nystul Lysander]

I still think gains on failures should be brought back into tougher skills...

Taming for one, Yes I had a over GM tamer, but my new ones worse then ever, 78 currently

Plus, I grew up with this "People learn from their mistakes", "People learn from history"

So why shouldnt our chars (heh, yeah I know =P) not learn from their own mistakes, although I dont think it should be the same change for a gain as suceed, it should still be brought back =(

BTW, this thread is too much for me to read, so I wont be able to check responses =P

[Corinthius]

Well, honestly I beleive it may be a little late in the game to totally revamp the skill gain system. I remember working over a year to make my first GM smith. I remember how ticked off I was when powerhour was implimented and everyone was making GM smiths in no time at all. I think the key to continued happiness from players at this point is consistancy. Keep it the same with no real changes and players will not have anything to gripe about.........do it the same way the last guy did it.

8x8ing and macroing have been around a long time. They are boring, tedious, dull, annoying, but faster ways to gain skills. I think they should be left alone. I know that I can 8x8 magery up in a day or two, I will spend a small fortune in regs doing it, but most of all I will be wasting an entire day of game play. I figure leave it up to the player.......power game or have fun......I do it both ways as the mood strikes me. It's nice having that freedom of choice.

Stat gain is a tougher one to think about. I honestly miss it the way it was because stats are more crucial to your training that almost any other factor and there is nothing worse than having to log in every so often to get your stat points you need. I would kill the stat timer all together and just let people see-saw them as needed to quickly balance and adjust their charactors. On the outside I would just leave it as is..........like I said before, consistancy.

[Vidi]

As someone just returning to UO and experiencing all these changes for the first time Id like to make a few comments

1) the key is UNATTENDED MACRO PREVENTION. Attended macroing is the ONLy way to gain skill in any reasonable amount of time for some skills.

ALSO, some skills can be macroed with in game tools ( the in game macro functions ) others cannot. That should be changed. Either the game offers everyone the chance to macro without the use of UOA or it doesnt. Either is fine, but it should offer the same chances for everyone.

8x8 - DO NOT ELIMINATE THIS! DO NOT fall prey to the same mistakes other developers are making. One of the best things about UO is you can( or rather could ) get a decent character up and running without pending three months "leveling" it. DO NOT CUT OFF YOU NOSE TO SPITE YOUR FACE.

2) How long is reasonable is a subjective term. For one player two hours is reasonable for others two months for some two years.

all skill gain should NOT be the same. Skills with little to no reward should be much faster than those with great reward.

3) Information about difficulty would be helpful but it doesnt need to be IN GAME. As long as the information is released and placed on Stratics ( as youre not adding the info to the UO site ) thenj that should be enough.

4) Why? And what happened to see sawing? I used to run a newbie helper guild. Anytime we found a young we'd grab them and start training them up. See sawing was one of thebest methods to help new players get started.



A last comment:

Sometimes the OLD ways of doing things we working fine. OSI spent alot of time fixing that which was not broken. After three weeks bac in game Im noticing only one thing important has changed.

Its harder. Period. Nearly every skill I choose is gimped in some way. Monsters drop lousy loot, skill gains are difficult to get, not being able to truly affect my stats sucks tremendously, the new magic item system is cumbersome to say the least and its pretty much determined that PvP is now about gear not skill.

I stand by the statement I made two years ago:

If things continue this way, then in the name of "balance" we will all be grouped up wrestling mongbats and splitting the 10 gold after we rez a few people.

The game should be fun. Not a mind numbing frustrating pain in the butt.

Guess Ill be playing something else for the next year.

[Vidi]

dont ya hate double posts?

[o Selwyn o]

Noble Mister Tact,

I have sought to give an answer to your questions.

Q: Should I eliminate 8x8? If skill gain were more predictable and sane, would you even need it?

A: To remove 8x8 sounds like a good idea, but only if the Guaranteed Gain System (GGS) is turned heavily up.

Perhaps something like this:
You will with 100% certainty gain 0.1 skill points per minute of game play if what you attempt to do is difficult enough for your level of skill. The skill you gain in will at random be one of the skills you are using during the one-minute of game play. If you only use one skill during that minute you will gain in that skill.
This means, that it will take 1000 minutes (16,66 hours) of game play to raise any skill from 0 to 100 and 7000 minutes (116, 66 hours i.e. around 5 days and nights of non-stop game play) to build a 7xGM character. This would allow the hardcore power players to build 7xGM characters with a nice speed, while it would also allow more casual players or role-players to build powerful characters within a reasonable timeframe.


Q: How much should I care about macroing prevention?

A: It appears to me, that no system has ever been successful in preventing macroing. Furthermore the power players, who wish to build characters fast, are also a legitimate part of the UO community. Thus, since you ask me of my opinion, I think it would be better to consider how to make room for the power player segment of the community in the skill gain code, rather than pondering ways of obstructing their way of playing the game. Why not incorporate them instead of trying to exclude them?

Q: How long should it reasonably take to GM a skill?

A: Following my suggestion above I think around 17 hours of non-stop game play is reasonable for moving a skill from 0 to 100.


Q: Should all skills be the same?

A: In terms of game mechanics, yes. Yet, to do something, which is difficult enough for your level of skill will certainly differ in difficulty from skill to skill. I mean, it is more difficult and dangerous to try to tame dragons or provoke Cyclops, than it is to mine ore.

Q: For difficulty-based skills, what information do you need? If a task isn't hard enough for you, should it tell you that?

A: As far as I see, it would be nice if you were told if what you did was too easy for to you gain any skill doing it.

Q: I'm thinking about decoupling stat gain completely from skill gain -- so every 15 minutes, you would just gain a stat point, up to your daily limit. Is that a bad idea?

A: I think it is a good idea to make the stat gains more consistent, but how about connecting them to a turned up GGS system, so that when you gained there you automatically gain a stat point, up to your daily limit.

Sincerely,
Selwyn

[krims0n]

Can't believe you even have to ask about getting rid of 8x8...

8x8 Ruined UO skill gain, and the economy in alot of cases. People macroed this extremely predictable skill gain system and became multi-GM overnight.

Yeah lets keep it in the game.

[Ciengarde]

I know I may get slamed for this but, I think it would not be a bad vet reward maybe or just something that happens when a account turns 6 years that it gets the TC set code as a option.
The Six year vet would not have to use it but would be available to him/her if they wanted too.
I realise that building skills is a big part of the game but after six years to be honest I been there done that. Also making it optional for the Six year Vet does not mean they have to use it.

The only real problem I see with this idea is a new player who has not been there done that yet may purchase a 6 year old account.
Not sure how you could prevent that but there maybe some ways.

[Balder_DK]

how about this one MrTact

remove that piece of to GGS..
and put Powerhour back in where it belong.
KTHXBYE

[The Real Maxim]

The 8x8 was originally made to prevent macroing. You guys failed miserably at that. Every time you change anything you open up a can of worms with new bugs and exploits. Let's leave the system the way it is so you don't break it. There has been macroing since the game started. It has been a problem only to those with completed characters.

Hell I can spend $29.95 and skip the macroing all together with an advanced character.

There are enough real problems in the game to fix. If you want to remove 8x8 or something else do it a couple years from now when you have more important bugs worked out.

If you want to work on something, figure out a way for my tamer to get gains. I can't 8x8 that and all I get is the GGS gain. You guys made it so I can't tame from a ledge or anything now. Fix that, then I can get gains. That was a stupid idea. The line of sight taming is dumb. It should never have been changed. With a dialup connection you can't tame anything dangerous now.

Leave 8x8 alone... All you people who say you don’t like it.. How much you want to bet your all gm'ed out. And you benefited from 8x8. And now you don’t want "newbies" gaining too quick.... What do you care if people can use 8x8 to make characters they can actually enjoy in this game. Does it really hurt you people if others can actually have viable characters in the world, so they can play decently too... I have gmed my characters... And I have done it both the 8x8 and the "Hard, Rewarding way"... I do not care if others are also GM's in 3 or 4 days. So they can play the game. Last time I checked 8x8 takes the time to sit there and 8x8... if they want to sit there for hours on hours for 3 to 4 days. Then aren’t they playing the game the way they want to play it... THIS IS JUST A GAME... stop trying to ruin it and make it harder for others who are new to it just because you feel that now 8x8 is to easy to gain with. I hate to tell you... if they take away 8x8 than that means not just on the water... but also on the land and that means that any movement based skills will me affected. So tell me was the hard way to gain magery moving around from place to place and casting the spells. Isn’t that the same thing as moving around 8x8 on the water to gain in magery? The only reason why 8x8 works on the water is because there is nothing to get in your way while you sail on certain lines. LEAVE IT ALONE.

About the stat gains, put them back to the way it was... You get stats for doing the associated skills... Now to gain any stats, all you have to do is log on every 15 to 20 mins and do arms lore... How silly is that. It makes more sense to gain by proper skill usage. And if you really need to limit the amount of gains (I don’t see why. This just goes back to the point of if they play and gain the whole time they are playing. Aren’t they still putting in the time to play and isn’t that what a game is about?) Than make the limit more reasonable. 10 pts a day really just servers to frustrate new players who cant get viable characters going. (GOD FORBID that newbies get viable characters going in a short period of time...That is just not fitting.)...

Macro preventing... yes if your doing macros while away from your computer. Then yes it should be stopped because you’re not playing the game... If your there the whole time IE playing the game... who cares if your macroing... I know I did for carpentry...

Yes yes. All you people getting your hackles up because you’re saying that is not playing. But let me tell you this, my wrists feel great without carpel's tunnel thank you. The amount of clicking you have to do in the 90's and up alone would put me in the doctors office. I am sorry if I am not going the true route of the REAL UO PLAYER. But I really appreciate UO Assist for saving me medical bills. THANK YOU TUGSOFT.

BTW. They GGS is not so Guaranteed


Mor.

Accomplished players = more fun for all.

A few years back one of my neighbors bought some Belgian block brick from a
home improvement center along with all of the sand and supplies he needed to
do some lawn work. He spent many hours leveling his front patio and walkway
and laying the brick. After about two weeks when the work was done, his
patio and walk looked beautiful. We all admired it. Soon everyone in the
neighborhood wanted brick walkways, patios, walls and driveways. Some of us
bought brick and spent days and weeks laying it. Some of us called
landscapers and had it done professionally in a few days. Still more of us
haven't done it yet but are interested in getting the brick and doing it
ourselves or having it done by someone else when time and money allow.
Meanwhile, more than three quarters of the neighborhood has beautifully
landscaped lawns and patios. And guess what? Nobody is hurt by it. In
fact, the neighborhood is truly lovely to drive through. Wow!! Imagine
that!! Everybody has this gorgeous end result and Everybody appreciates it
instead of being jealous that one neighbor slaved over his own work while
another payed a pro. Go figure! Not everyone has the time, money and
resources to do everything they want to do the hard way, folks. Mind your
own garden and learn to appreciate the beauty of other people's gardens no
matter how they choose to tend theirs. If you don't like 8x8 - simply don't
use it.

And another thing, I have no idea how much my neighbors earn or have in
their savings or how they got it. I wouldn't CARE if I did know - AND if
they had a fortune and got it really easy and were willing to let me in on
their method, I'd be full of joy and love for them and out making millions
myself, not griping about the work ethic in a fantasy game. If every player
on every shard were a 7 time GM with 10 million gold in their bank account,
how on Earth would that take away from my enjoyment of the game? So what if
some character in a video game gets (dare i breathe the astronomical
figure!!!) seven items from something you find easy to kill. How does that
hurt you? or anyone else? If you have too many Easter eggs from vorpal
bunnies or too much treasure then HEY!! news alert!! "YOU CAN STOP HUNTING
THEM ANY TIME!!" But why should you care if someone else likes to hunt them
and gets easter eggs. MYOB.

And you want to know what the most incredibly stupid thing in the game is?
Power Scrolls. That's so airheaded, it's like - dude on a scale of 1-100 I
have like a 110. Why make a scale?

And what does fair have to do with gameplay? Is it fair that one player
has 20 free hours a week to play but another works longer hours and so can
only play 4. It's not a real fair world out there in case you haven't
noticed. What about making training handicaps for people who don't have as
much time to play. If you can demonstrate that you only have 2 hours a week
to play then you get a free 2 power hours each week. HEY that sounds fair
to me! How about people who are just not as smart as others. It doesn't
sound fair to me that stupid people should have to figure out hard stuff
when smart people just get it. How about making a whole special shard for
people who can prove they are total idiots, and on that shard everywhere you
hover the mouse you will get special instructions on whatever is
highlighted. Hey! I know, it's not fair that kids have to play against
adults. Consider that. How about separating the shards into over 18 year
old shards and kids shards; or better yet making certain facets accessible
only to people over 18. No kids in Ilshnear or Fel. Wait a minute! Should
inner city kids have to play with rural kids? that doesn't sound fair. They
have different outlooks on life! Why don't we just be total bigots in the
spirit of being fair and say only people of the same age group, same ethnic
background, same financial background, same place in the birth order of
their family, same marital status and same favorite color can play together.
That way they are all likely to have the same view on whether or not vorpal
bunnies should have 7 items.

Wait I have solved the problem completely. Make different shards for
people who want a lot of treasure on vorpal bunnies and those who don't.
And different shards for people who want 8x8 and those who don't. That's
it! Kudo's to me! Next I need to work on the meaning of life and world
peace, give me a week on an 8x8 shard or two on a non 8x8 okay guys?

Finally about macro usage. I can only assume the objection to the use of
macros is in reference to using them for training. If that is the case then
get over it. Why should you care if people are GMs? Your being pickled
about it isn't going to stop them from GMing so what do you care if it takes
them an hour or a year. Macros, however are far more useful to the majority
of us, in my opinion, in setting up things like hot keys for disarming,
drinking potions and re-arming, or sparing the wrist a hundred clicks when
your Alchemist who is already a GM needs to make a keg of potions. In
fact, as it so happens, most of my frequently used characters GM'ed before I
got UO Assist, but I still find it to be thoroughly useful every time I
play - especially now that I have different suits of clothes for each
activity my characters do. The undress and dress functions are great in
that capacity as is the remove ring/earrings key. All of these features are
actually mini-macros. I can't understand why anyone would object to these.
That is just petty.

[KyraMarie]

BTW how long is this vacation? Is he back? Has he said something about the posts?

[Goldenblack]

I see what you're saying, about work being valued. I'm just of the opinion that every aspect of a well-done and admirable game should be fun. There should be no tedious. There should only be challenging (but doable).

Yes tedium adds a certain aspect to the economy, but...honestly, I'd rather do tedium in RL, and get rewards for it here in RL, instead of paying for the privelage in a so-called "game." But that's just me.

-Goldenblack

[coldstonevnv]

" How much should I care about macroing prevention? Should I eliminate 8x8? If skill gain were more predictable and sane, would you even need it? "

If you're saying you're going to make gaining skills easier, to the point where you would gain the same amount of skill points by playing the game normally, like any newbie would, as you would by running around in circles or sailing in a straight line 24 hours/uoday working a skill, then yes you should take out the option of running around in circles and sailing in a straight line. then again, maybe if you made gaining skills less "INSANE" (as u put it) maybe no one would bother with 8x8. ..................Suddenly i realize why raising tailoring by standing still at my bank box isn't working.................

" How long should it reasonably take to GM a skill? Should all skills be the same? "

This is something you have to decide. the longer it takes, the sooner someone might give up and quit uo. I'd suggest taking a look at other mmorpgs and seeing how long they take to get a top of the line char. Apparently some recent ones have either sped this up a LOT, or sped up the act of changing skills. i personally cant wait for this skill gem thing to come out. The roleplaying possibilities makes me drool.

Not all skills should be the same, wait no, all skills should be the same... ok what i mean is, the more difficult to raise skills should be sped up to match the easier to raise skills. Gaining points in things like, healing, resisting spells, taming, these are skills that take 100 times longer than most to raise, simply because you dont use them as often as the others, im guessing. skills like this should be sped up i think.

"For difficulty-based skills, what information do you need? If a task isn't hard enough for you, should it tell you that?"

ehhhh... i dont wanna be told im an idiot every time i tame a horse. If u wanna help people know what to do and when, put it on your webpage. or put up an ad for stratics.

"I'm thinking about decoupling stat gain completely from skill gain -- so every 15 minutes, you would just gain a stat point, up to your daily limit. Is that a bad idea? "

well, so long as it gives u the right stats for the skills you're using the most, i guess. if it isn't broken, don't fix it.

coldstone cutter, vnv, great lakes
www.geocities.com/vnvguild (http://www.geocities.com/vnvguild)

ps i like the idea of being able to get items off monsters that are better than what someone could craft. i also like the idea of insurance, tho it is way too expensive, glad to hear you're gonna lower this.

[Newman]

This is just a little idea that I had, and many may not like it, but I would (and a few others out there as well). This is a bit off topic, but it is still somewhat on topic.

Create a shard where you get say three chars per shard. No powerscrolls, no stat scrolls, just use the same bosses that are in dungeons now to give out some of the more uber weapons, but still have those available on difficult monsters as well. Upon creating the character, rather than only selecting the three starting skills, you choose 7. Those 7 are auto GMed. The difference between this and TC, is this is a permanent shard with housing and the works, and you cannot change skills mid-battle.

Whats the use you say? Its great for 1) powergamers and 2) players who dont have the time/desire to build the skills of the characters.

There are many out there that say "Jeeze, you just want the game handed to you huh?". No. I want to be able to play the game, just like everyone else. But for me, and MANY others out there, the fun is not in building the characters (I did that for over 5 years already, it gets awfully repetative) but PLAYING the characters. Sure, you say go play and your skills will go up. But you cant play the way you WANT to play when your not at an appropriate level. I know, I sound like a baby saying "ME ME ME" but truthfully, what would it hurt if you had ONE shard or two depending on demand for play styles like mine?

"What about reds? They will just kill, and remake their character!"
Remember P-16 when they came up with "One red - All Red". Sounds like a good spot to put this in. =)

Ok, im tired and dont have time to sit here and type up a full proposal with pros and cons and all that right now. This is just a "get it out" thing. Perhaps I will post in a main forum with a detailed post. Until then, I just say good night. /php-bin/shared/images/icons/wink.gif

[Burl]

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Yes tedium adds a certain aspect to the economy, but...honestly, I'd rather do tedium in RL, and get rewards for it here in RL, instead of paying for the privelage in a so-called "game." But that's just me.

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I hope you realize you're asking the impossible. The whole point of any game is to overcome obstacles that are deliberately thrown in front of you. I suppose it is the most fun when those obstacles present an interesing and new challenge, but every game gets old after a few times. You can't create a skill gain system that is 'continually' fun. Maybe you could get rid of skill gain, and just allow players to play a fully developed character, but then you eliminate the whole aspect of character development. How fun is it to go around and kill monsters that are easy to kill? or to make things that anyone can make?

I would say that the best skill gain system should be tedious enough to make people complain, but not quit. You think you don't like tedium, but here you are! How long would you play this game if you could hop into any type of character you wanted? I bet alot less long than you think.

[JohnD1]

&gt; How much should I care about macroing prevention?

Not at all. If someone is going to macro attended, so be it. Let them macro.

&gt; Should I eliminate 8x8?

No. 8x8 works fine as-is, so doesn't need to be removed.

&gt; If skill gain were more predictable and sane, would you even
&gt; need it?

Yes, especially for those players who don't have the time to play long hours each and every day (or even every other day).

&gt; How long should it reasonably take to GM a skill?

I'd say a few months to a year...some number in that range of time.

&gt; Should all skills be the same?

Yes.

&gt; For difficulty-based skills, what information do you need? If a
&gt; task isn't hard enough for you, should it tell you that?

That shouldn't be necessary if common sources such as Stratics offer such a calculator free (as in, not just a feature of Stratics Plus). Otherwise, that would be nice, yes.

&gt; I'm thinking about decoupling stat gain completely from skill gain
&gt; -- so every 15 minutes, you would just gain a stat point, up to
&gt; your daily limit. Is that a bad idea?

In my opinion, yes. I believe that stat gain should be linked to skill gain. As it is right now feels close enough to leave alone.

[KyraMarie]

I agree with you I want to PLAY not to build skills

Yes! Bring us back the old days and kick 8x8 /php-bin/shared/images/icons/smile.gif

I'd really like if you'll get the old gain-system back!

Well, a Grandmaster mage was done at the old times of UO in ... 7-8 months. That gave importance on these ones who haven't had GM or high skills. A group of (carefully and FALSELY said) noobs are sometimes better than one 7xGM. If it would take such a long time to GM a skill, and no chance of powergaming anywhere, would bring the people together again. To fight in Dungeons and to do other things together. The result of that would be that the community would be stronger again (what I wouldn't say it is at the moment!!!). In fact, although I can't explain it, the RP part of this game would come back again if it would be very difficult to gain in the skills- I'd guess /php-bin/shared/images/icons/wink.gif

Decoupling stat gains completly from Skill gains, sure, why not. In RL matter, I become muscles when I practice in fitness-studios, but I don't think I'd practice a skill there (if I could declare it so /php-bin/shared/images/icons/wink.gif )

[imported_Ghost_Knight]

I left the game soon after T2A and was never able to get to gm on my mage. I came back in November and had a 6x elder archer mage in 6 weeks. I think archery took the last two weeks and I was already 5x elder in a month. I would say it is definitely way too easy now. Really the only thing limiting everyone from being a legendary mage is gold.

[Fox News]

It doesn't even really matter anymore. The only reason I could see for changing the way skill is gained is if you add new skills, or change the current ones bigtime.